To Vindicate His Helpless Right

On Monday, March 22nd, 2010, Google made its D-Day – Departure Day out of China. In this anti-political slavery in China, Google is my John Brown (1800 – 1859, a prominent American abolitionist).

Henry Thoreau (1817 – 1862) was a proponent of non-violent resistance to immoral governments, and his essay Civil Disobedience inspired Mohandas Gandhi (1869 – 1948) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 – 1968). Yet, he heartily defended John Brown’s action.

“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history,” wrote Thoreau; and allow me to bestow it to Google for its last two months confrontation to the Chinese Communist.

“Our thoughts could not revert to any greater or wiser or better man with whom to contrast him, for he, then and there, was above them all. The man this country was about to hang appeared the greatest and best in it,” wrote Thoreau; and allow me to bestow it to Google for its refusing to succumb itself to the Chinese Communist.

“Editors persevered for a good while in saying that Brown was crazy; but at last they said only that it was ‘a crazy scheme,’ and the only evidence brought to prove it was that it cost him his life. I have no doubt that if he had gone with five thousand men, liberated a thousand slaves, killed a hundred or two slaveholders, and had as many more killed on his own side, but not lost his own life, these same editors would have called it be a more respectable name. Yet he had been far more successful than that. He has liberated many thousands of slaves, both North and South. They seem to have known nothing about living or dying for a principle. They all called him crazy then; who calls him crazy now?” wrote Thoreau; and allow me to bestow it to Google for its market loss by holding man’s dignity of Pico della Mirandola (1463 – 1494) – freedom – in front of the Chinese Communist.

The Chinese Communist is mad at Google’s action and said: “For Chinese people, Google is not god, and even if it puts on a show of politics and values, it is still not god.” The Chinese Communist knew how to create god before, and now services itself only god in China. It is paranoia of the Chinese Communist to speculate whether Google is god or not. However, Google has a soul, that is for sure; and Google needs help. Soul is many Chinese (definitely including the Chinese Communist) lacking of and living without under the Chinese Communist reign. Thoreau quoted a poem of Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678) for Brown [sic]:

He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
Nor called the gods with vulgar spite,
To vindicate his helpless right;
But bowed his comely head
Down, as upon a bed.

To those who are sorry for having been missing the anti-slavery movement and to those who are sorry for having been missing the civil right movement, there is a political slavery in China need to be abolished; noting that the concept of political slavery is from Charles de Montesquieu (1689 – 1755). When Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865, his presidency, 1861 -1865) was the shepherd for the American slaves, who will be the shepherd for those political slaves of the Chinese Communist Party?

You Cannot Administer a Wicked Law Impartially

When the Chinese people talk about colonialism, they generally refer it to be Western Colonialism, mainly because Hong Kong was colonized by the Britain; and the grudge towards the West for this has passed into this new century. However, the Chinese people basically don’t regard the Qing Dynasty of Manchu (1644 – 1912) as colonization. The Chinese Communist defines the period before this People’s Republic as a half-feudal half-colonial society, by taking Manchu for feudalism and Western for colonialism.

Emperor Qianlong of Qing (Hongli, 1711 – 1799) is always beloved by many Chinese, and his reign (1735 – 1796) is regarded as one of a few Chinese Golden Ages. Many Chinese love him so much that they even believe Qianlong a Han-Chinese. Why not? How can this glory not belong to the Han as usual? If the Chinese can take Qianlong’s 53 cases of literary inquisition (wenziyu in Chinese) as a glory of China, they will take Qianlong’s letter to King George III of British in 1793 the same, too. Yes, in this particular letter of his, Qianlong won every single word, but China lost its future. Less than 10 years, Vietnam, a nation has more than 2,000 years history within China, got its sovereignty in 1802.

King George III sent an envoy to China in 1793, aiming to enhance the trade with China and to gain some additional privileges from China. For some reasons, there exists some hearsay out there, Qianlong failed that Britain envoy’s mission, and he wrote this letter to the Britain King. Here are some excerpts:

As to your entreaty to send one of your nationals to be accredited to my Celestial Court and to be in control of your country's trade with China, this request is contrary to all usage of my dynasty and cannot possibly be entertained. It is true that Europeans, in the service of the dynasty, have been permitted to live at Peking, but they are compelled to adopt Chinese dress, they are strictly confined to their own precincts and are never permitted to return home. You are presumably familiar with our dynastic regulations. Your proposed Envoy to my Court could not be placed in a position similar to that of European officials in Peking who are forbidden to leave China, nor could he, on the other hand, be allowed liberty of movement and the privilege of corresponding with his own country; so that you would gain nothing by his residence in our midst.

… Supposing that your Envoy should come to our Court, his language and national dress differ from that of our people, and there would be no place in which to bestow him. It may be suggested that he might imitate the Europeans permanently resident in Peking and adopt the dress and customs of China, but, it has never been our dynasty's wish to force people to do things unseemly and inconvenient. … The thing is utterly impracticable. How can our dynasty alter its whole procedure and system of etiquette, established for more than a century, in order to meet your individual views? …

Swaying the wide world, I have but one aim in view, namely, to maintain a perfect governance and to fulfil the duties of the State: strange and costly objects do not interest me. If I have commanded that the tribute offerings sent by you, O King, are to be accepted, this was solely in consideration for the spirit which prompted you to dispatch them from afar. …

Qianlong in his letter referred the western as “barbarian merchants”, “outside barbarians”, “barbarian tribes”, “barbarian land”, “barbarian subjects”, “barbarian”, etc. But, calling these names really did not show his intelligence or his enlightenment.

On Friday, March 12th, 2010, a Chinese official, in the same authority as the one in my essay A Cyber-Taboo in China, warned Google, who is about to stop filtering search results, and said: “If you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to pay the consequences.” What caused Google to deserve this kind of harsh censure in China? Google wants to enhance its business in China in a better condition: to defy the censorship in China, to denounce the organized hacking crimes in China, like King George III wanted a better condition for the Britain merchants before. Yes, I want to be friendly, I want to be responsible and, yet, I want one more that above all: I want “[to] be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650)

If one agrees with Descartes that man’s mind exists, Google’s information searching results are the products of their integrities. If one ascertains Emperor Qianlong isolated China from the western advanced manufactured products before, the Chinese Communist is isolating China from the enlightened human rational mind. If one believes the censorship and imprisonment could confine man’s mind, Henry Thoreau (1817 – 1862) would say: “I was put into a jail once on this account [refuse to pay his poll-tax for his cause], for one night; and as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.”

The laws in China are often ex post facto laws, as I wrote in my essay An Unjust Law is No Law at All, because China’s laws lack the base of universal suffrage. Charles de Montesquieu (1689 – 1755) said: “The laws therefore which establish the right of suffrage are fundamental to this [republic] government.” However, the sovereignty in this People’s Republic “implies the relation of a superior (legislating) to an inferior (obeying)” Immanuel Kant (1724 -1804). That is why this officer warns Google “to pay the consequences” because when he mentions a law, he lacks the rule of law; what he has is a wicked law. Henry Drummond (a character in Inherit the Wind, a movie in 1960 or play in 1955) argued: “I say that you cannot administer a wicked law impartially. You can only destroy, you can only punish. And I warn you, that a wicked law, like cholera, destroys every one it touches. Its upholders as well as its defiers.” What is so terribly wrong for the Chinese people to get full information by not excluding Google? Isn’t one misjudgment of Emperor Qianlong enough for China? Doesn’t the every Chinese entitle the right to dare to know?

Hukou: A Modern Serfdom in China

“MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712 – 1778; the main drafter of the Polish Constitution of May 3rd, 1791)

It was reported that this week a rare joint editorial of 13 Chinese newspapers was unprecedentedly released for appealing to reform and even further to abolish the Chinese Hukou system. In the news of Chinese newspapers unite to call for reform, the editorial reportedly said: “We believe people are born to freedom and [have] the right to migrate. We jointly release this editorial, asking all representatives of the NPC [National People’s Congress] and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference to make good use of your political power and urge the authorities to launch a reform to abolish the ossified hukou system.”

The Chinese Hukou system nominally is a household permit or residence registration system, but, in realty, it is one of the Chinese social status indicators, soon after it was implemented by the Chinese Communist more than half-century ago. The benefit and the symbol between townspeople and rural people are so different that it is the rural people’s life dream to change their own and their children’s Hukou to townspeople’s. One purpose of Hukou is to target the Chinese peasants for restricting their mobility. One way to change a Chinese peasant’s Hukou generally is to go to college, which is not easy for a peasant before and not reliable now; another way is to join the Chinese PLA and be lucky enough to be promoted to an officer’s rank. An interclass marriage won’t be guaranteed to change the status, for the next generation’s Hukou is set to maternal according to the policy of the Chinese Communist. Thus, Hukou is a kind of bondage on the Chinese peasants chained by the Chinese Communist.

If Hukou were of the Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, I would say that Hukou indeed is of the Serfdom with Chinese Characteristics, noting that serf is from Russian крепостной крестьянин, means unfree peasant. If the Russian serfs were held by privates, the modern Chinese serfs are held by the Chinese government. If we regarded that it was progress when Peter the Great (1672 – 1725) ended slavery for serfdom, it is an immoral setback when the Chinese Communist fetters Hukou upon the Chinese peasants; not to mention that it was the Chinese peasants who helped the Chinese Communist grabbed the power. Thus, Hukou in China is not only a kind of oppression to the Chinese peasants, but also a scandal in world history. Now, these 13 Chinese newspapers editors refused to be such scandalum acceptum anymore, they appealed to the Chinese rubber-stamp legislative to reform and even abolish the Hukou system. Will this happen? Probably not. For years the Chinese Communist has devised this Hukou system to be more, not less sophisticated. What is more, the Chinese Communist wants all the Chinese netizens to register on internet in their real names. It is hardly to imagine that Hukou will be abolished by the Chinese Communist, at most a substitute for robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Am I criticizing these 13 Chinese newspapers editors to resort the Chinese legislative for justice? Not at all. It is a very decent expedient in a true republic government. A typical example is in the famous, if not notorious, ruling of the American Supreme Court on the case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford in 1857; and this ruling partially incurred the American Civil War (1861 – 1865). It wrote:

It is not the province of the court to decide upon the justice or injustice, the policy or impolicy, of these laws. The decision of that question belonged to the political or law-making power; to those who formed the sovereignty and framed the Constitution. The duty of the court is, to interpret the instrument they have framed, with the best lights we can obtain on the subject, and to administer it as we find it, according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted.

Yes, law-makers indeed should be responsible on just laws; yet, Henry Thoreau (1817 – 1862) questioned, “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?” The Chinese people must believe in themselves and arouse their own consciences, so the fate of Hukou for the Chinese peasants will be in their own hands.