Daniel's Personal Opinion

There Can’t Be Any Such Thing as Civilization Unless People Have a Conscience

2010-05-30T10:15:00.005-04:00

“There can’t be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience” is a notion in movie Ox-Bow Incident, 1943. Donald Martin, one of victims by that lynch, wrote a letter to his wife about this incident. The letter represents the theme of the movie, it reads:

My dear wife, Mr. Davies will tell you what’s happening here tonight. He’s a good man and has done everything he can for me. I suppose there are some other good men here, too, only they don’t seem to realize what they’re doing. They’re the ones I feel sorry for. `cause it’ll be over for me in a little while, but they’ll have to go on remembering for the rest of their lives. A man just naturally can’t take the law into his own hands and hang people without hurtin` everybody in the world, `cause then he’s just not breaking one law but all laws. Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It’s everything people ever have found out about justice and what’s right and wrong. It’s the very conscience of humanity. There can’t be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience? And what is anybody’s conscience except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived? I guess that’s all I’ve got to say except kiss the babies for me and God bless you. Your husband, Donald.

If civilization is built upon conscience, what is conscience then? Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) said: “Now this original intellectual and (as a conception of duty) moral capacity, called conscience, has this peculiarity in it, that although its business is a business of man with himself, yet he finds himself compelled by his reason to transact it as if at the command of another person. For the transaction here is the conduct of a trial (causa) before a tribunal. But that he who is accused by his conscience should be conceived as one and the same person with the judge is an absurd conception of a judicial court; for then the complainant would always lose his case. Therefore in all duties the conscience of the man must regard another than himself as the judge of his actions, if it is to avoid self-contradiction.” Kant gave the double personality of a man to explain that conscience should be the accuser (the noumenal) and the judge, not the accused (the phenomenal) to be the judge. Otherwise, the accused would always win the cases.

The Chinese people have a very different concept of conscience. Basically the Chinese don’t believe there is conscience; one Chinese saying is “if man had conscience, dog would lose its nature”. The Chinese generally regard conscience to be gratitude: if a man showed his gratitude (phenomenon), they would say he had a conscience (noumenon). The Chinese people, especially the Chinese rulers, are used to being the judges by themselves when they feel uneasy internally, so the winners are always themselves. The consequence is they have failed to grasp what consciences mean to themselves for long history; and this has profoundly influenced the Chinese culture. Almost every Chinese knows Liang Qichao’s (1873 – 1929) Four Great Ancient Civilizations and is proud of China among them. But the Chinese sense their civilization is more or less astray, so they are struggling in constructing a new civilization. Of course, that won’t be easy while the Chinese keep ignoring the calls of their consciences; but it must be done since a civilization without conscience means its future is obsolete.

The Chinese Communist is so used to being the judge that it will make consciences lose all cases. The Chinese elites are so used to wagging their tails that they hardly have their consciences in their whole lives. The Chinese soldiers are so used to being conscienceless that they helped the Chinese Communist to commit the June Fourth Massacre in 1989, etc. The Chinese people are so used to being oppressed that they don’t know how to protect their rights in right ways; some of them ended their tragedies in extreme ways, such as, Chinese school attacks and Chinese factory suicides in 2010. In truth, it is a societal tragedy in China when conscience could not be aroused massively. When the Chinese tries to build a new civilization, they ought to arouse their long lost consciences first. So answer the door when a conscience is knocking on it.

Individuality, Minority, and Majority

2010-05-23T10:15:00.007-04:00

The adage that “the Chinese voters do not vote” is spreading like a pandemic in this world. I don’t know if the swine flu in 2009 (a highest phase pandemic according to the World Health Organization) could infect more Chinese world-widely than this adage.

This week, the results of the special election held in Hong Kong came out and made the lowest turn-out rate in Hong Kong history, less than 18 percent. Someone might take objection: it is because of the boycott led by the Hong Kong government. Sustained, but it only upholds that adage, doesn’t it? This awkward self-disruptiveness orchestrated by the Hong Kong administration could be revealed from the news No softballs for Henry Tang [Chief Secretary] at school meeting:

The school teacher said: “The by-election was legal. As teachers, we promote civic education at school and encourage students to register as voters once they turn 18. But you, the chief executive and the politically accountable officials did not vote … All the teachers and students sitting here want this ([she] raises sign reading ‘I want the right to elect the chief executive!’)”
Mr. Tang replied: “I very much agree with your slogan and this is exactly what will happen in 2017. And about the question of voting, civic responsibility is important in every election, but in Hong Kong there is no compulsory voting. Civic responsibility is about a person making a decision after thinking independently. It is not about blindly following others.”

From Mr. Tang’s context, it appears that he concurs on the importance of individuality. Granted, yet he probably already undermined his own individuality for his “blindly following others” – his superior’s no-vote decision. However, individuality should not be taken to impede voters to vote; instead it should encourage voters to vote; because, by voting, voters can assure their liberty to be individuals. Liberty is one of human unalienable rights according to the American Declaration of Independence. Furthermore: “Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being, as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.” (James Cooper, 1789 – 1851)

Before this election, one of the Hong Kong officials said that the power of this administration is from the central government of China. Bully for you, but it only affirms that the officials of Hong Kong are the vassals of the Chinese Communist Empire, doesn’t it? If the power is not from the voters – the people in Hong Kong, why bother to poll elections then? No wonder the reason that the Chief Executive of Hong Kong gave for no-vote decision is: it is a waste of public funding. Based on the fact that he is selected by his lord, the true reason of his no-vote decision is because the voters in Hong Kong are powerless, doesn’t it? What a cynic he is! “What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” (Oscar Wilde, 1854 – 1900) Yes, in any measures, the pro-democratic voters are minority in Hong Kong, yet they are on the right side of history. Henry Thoreau (1817 – 1862) said: “Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.”[Note 1]

Now, this Chief Executive of Hong Kong is challenging pro-democratic parties to take a debate. He acted so pompous as if he had the truth in his hand. He is ready and cannot wait to impose his agenda “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.” (James Madison 1751 – 1836, the Father of the Constitution in America, his presidency, 1809 – 1817) So what will he sell to the people in Hong Kong in his proposed debate for his lord? Let’s face it: what the pro-democratic parties want is this vassal cannot give; he cannot give because his lord does not give him. What this vassal wants merely is a mission accomplishment for his lord, will the pro-democratic parties help him to fulfill? Please don’t tell me: “His proposal is the best one he could offer in regarding to his position”. Please don’t tell me: “The people in Hong Kong are much luckier than the people in China in regarding to suffrage”. For me it likes to say: “The condition in a ‘horse jail’ is much better than in a ‘human jail’[Note 2] and he tried his best to put the people in Hong Kong into ‘horse jail’, while the people in China are still in ‘human jail’”. My question is: why cannot the people in Hong Kong get their freedom like the people in Taiwan have, so this “horse jail” would be unnecessary in Hong Kong?

Note 1: In the age of Thoreau’s, American suffrage was with many restrictions, such as, white man with property, poll tax, and literacy test, etc. Not every American can vote. Grant (1822 – 1885, his presidency, 1869 – 1877) was not eligible to vote in 1860, because he was not living longer enough in Illinois then. Also, in America, the election day is set on Tuesday, because, in the past, Sunday is for religion, Monday is for remote voters to travel, so that they can cast their votes on Tuesday.

Note 2: Both “horse jail” and “human jail” are the terms in movie Gone with the Wind, 1939. In the movie, a rich man was taken as prisoner of war, but he bribed jail keepers to stay out of jail because “human jail” was inhumane, instead he stayed with horses in this satiric “horse jail” for a better treatment.

A Military Coup D’état is a Hindrance to Democracy

2010-05-16T10:15:00.006-04:00

Before World War II, there were just three old glorious countries in Asia that held their independence: China, Japan, and Thailand. During the War, none of them could defend its own country from invasion with its own standing army: China and Thailand were invaded by Japan. Japan finally lost its war to America. After the War, the standing armies of China and Thailand have constantly interfered in their domestic affairs, by showing their savageness towards their people, instead of their valor for them. It is probably a good thing for the Japanese people that Japanese army is restrained as a result of war so that they needn’t suffer more from their own army.

Thailand is supposed to be a republic of Machiavelli’s (Niccolo Machiavelli1469 – 1527) republic government form: a tripartite state of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. However, when a military coup d’état occurred, it became a despotic government. Thus, its people, in the democratic part of its tripartite, are no longer citizens, but subjects. That is why the world is seeing the standing army of Thailand shoot at its peaceful mass assembly, because “[a]s fear is the principle of despotic government, its end is tranquility; but this tranquility cannot be called a peace: no, it is only the silence of those towns which the enemy is ready to invade.” (Charles de Montesquieu, 1689 – 1755)

The People’s Republic of China is its ruler’s self-entertainment republic. Deng Xiaoping (1904 – 1997) was the worst type of ruler; he ruled China nakedly with his military leader title. Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976) still knew to add a ruling party leader title upon himself whether for his ostentation or not. Deng was a retired army political officer, yet he re-entered the Chinese PLA as its top leader. I don’t know if his “out and in” the Chinese PLA was inspired by the notion of Japan’s “in and out” China or not; yet by this, he still didn’t make himself a real statesman, but merely a state leader. The consequence is: Deng executed like a leviathan and committed the June Fourth Massacre through his most trustworthy troops in the standing army of China. It is shameful to the standing army of China because it likes the Thailand’s army to be only able to show its valor to its own people, not to its country’s enemy. “Add to this [to the standing army] that to pay men to kill or to be killed seems to entail using them as mere machines and tools in the hand of another (the state), and this is hardly compatible with the rights of mankind in our own person.” (Immanuel Kant 1724 – 1804)

If, in soldiers’ mind in China, Japan, and Thailand, their killings were not only for their lords, but also for their countries, that would only show their un-enlightenment. In the movie Doctor Zhivago, 1965, there is a scene about the Russian officers to urge their soldiers to go to the front line in World War I:

Officer: Listen, lads. Ten miles up that road are the Germans!
Soldier: Rubbish!
Officer: It’s not rubbish. They’re coming. And they’re coming fast. You’ve let them in! They’re coming for your wives, your houses, your country.
Soldier: Your country, officer!
Officer: Yes, my country! And Proud…
[Some soldier shot at that officer and killed him at the scene.]

Those Russian soldiers knew: wives were their own wives, houses were their own houses; but country under Czar was theirs? Humm…

So how do military personnel participate in the political affairs as he/she is entitled for being a citizen? Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) said:

I reply: The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among mankind; the private use of reason may, however, often be very narrowly restricted, without otherwise hindering the progress of enlightenment. … Thus it would be disastrous if an officer on duty who was given a command by his superior were to question the appropriateness or utility of the order. He must obey. But as a scholar he cannot be justly constrained from making comments about errors in military service, or from placing them before the public for its judgment. …

In America, both Ulysses Grant (1822 – 1885, his presidency, 1869 – 1877) and Dwight Eisenhower (1890 – 1969, his presidency, 1953 – 1961) retired from their military position before entering their political life, and neither them re-entered US army afterwards. Grant’s military retirement cost his finance dearly, for until 1958, the former presidents of the United States were without pensions.

America’s Showdown with the Chinese Yuan

2010-04-04T10:18:00.004-04:00

One year ago, it was China to initiate its anti-US dollar hegemony by calling a new “super-sovereign reserve currency”. Now, it is America’s call to end the Chinese yuan peg to the US dollar. People wonder: how can the Sino-US relation encounter this intension after they enjoyed good, better, best, even G-2 periods? It seems that the culprit of all troubles is of the America’s Great Recession recently. China felt that it was the victim of the US dollar hegemony, though there is essentially no such hegemony existing in a fiat money; America feels that it is the victim of the Chinese yuan manipulation, through undervalued and currency peg. Thus, the adulation between them before the America’s Great Recession was just a Stockholm syndrome phenomenon. To make myself clear: I have no intention to offend those Stockholm syndrome related persons.

In western economics, to deal a recession usually depends on either the Classical Liberalism of Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), whose preference is laissez-faire or homeostasis, a choice for convenience in governing; or the Keynesianism of John Keynes (1883 – 1946), whose preference is government intervention with massive spending stimulus, even with deficit, a choice for necessary in governing. Smith’s approach would take longer and risk competitive ability lost in modern globalization. Most of economists, if not all in America, prefer Keynesian to deal this Great Recession. However, the monetary authority in America already reached its limit to stimulate the economy: due to liquidity trap and marginal efficiency of capital; and the Federal Reserve chief admitted recently that the US economy is not “out of the woods” yet. It appears that fiscal authority of Keynesian is the only way to continue the stimulus: including expenditures, revenues, and debt. We know Americans are short of revenues, for Americans have dire debt (near $900 billions owe to China); and we know massive expenditures ($700 billions in TARP and more $800 billions in stimulus) imply more debt while Americans cannot find enough revenues; and we know during a recession, taxation hike is not a favorite choice. So, the Americans are under pressures to find more revenues before the current stimulus money running out, in case of the economy is not “out of the woods” and the second stimulus is out of the question in near future.

Where is the money to increase revenues? This is not difficult to find out: China has hoarded $2.4 trillions foreign exchange reserves. That probably incurs US to call for a global economy rebalancing. Naturally, China is reluctant to give its money up in vain, some Chinese PLA generals called the Chinese government to use its monetary advantage to punish America for selling arms to Taiwan; and certain Chinese economist claimed to lift its currency peg in September, just before America’s mid-term election in November. It is clear that the Chinese Communist is trying to influence itself directly on American politics with its money power; and we know how the Chinese Communist treat its political slaves by using its power. Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) understood this danger of money power deeply. In his Perpetual Peace, which is the philosophical foundation of the League of Nations before and the United Nations now, Kant wrote:

The accumulation of treasure would have the same effect [in making war], for, of the three powers – the power of armies, of alliances, and of money – the third is perhaps the most dependable weapon. Such accumulation of treasure is regarded by other states as a threat of war, and if it were not for the difficulties in learning the amount, it would force the other state to make an early attack.

… [money power] is dangerous because it is a war treasure which exceeds the treasures of all other states; it cannot be exhausted except by default of taxes (which is inevitable), though it can be long delayed by the stimulus to trade which occurs through the reaction of credit on industry and commerce. This facility in making war, together with the inclination to do so on the part of rulers – an inclination which seems inborn in human nature – is thus a great hindrance to perpetual peace. …

Realizing the danger of the Chinese money power in this Stockholm syndrome, some Americans prefer the risk-control; others prefer the damage-control; and yet it had better not be a unilateral action by America alone, they argued. The risk-control is necessary, and that means to stay with your captor, and borrow more debt. But this financial war has been starting already, and the American is not in a good position, if not losing. The damage-control is inevitable, even this means to declare China a currency manipulator officially. Otherwise, Americans still risk money shortage in case of the economy is not “out of the woods” and there is no second stimulus bill to be passed. Either way, this odd couple’s relationship will be broken sooner or later, “though it can be long delayed by the stimulus to trade which occurs through the reaction of credit on industry and commerce.” Meanwhile, the Chinese government already starts to scheme its new “super-sovereign reserve currency” in its region, so what are the Americans waiting for? An invitation? Even if the Chinese yuan were fully convertible, the danger will be still there. The Chinese Communist is not a good partner for perpetual peace in any measures by Kantian.

While the American meditates, if not dithers, its best option, I am feeling bad for the Chinese Communist, for China’s 2.4 trillions foreign exchange reserves have not been benefiting those ordinary Chinese people, but those Chinese elites. This is obvious without “the consent of the [Chinese] citizens” (Immanuel Kant). For Kantian, people in this People’s Republic are subjects and not citizens; the ruler is proprietor and not a member of the state. While the American ebbs, if not withers, its capitalism, I am feeling bad for the American neoliberalist, for the American is losing not only its “most dependable weapon” – money power, but also its alliances’ expectation world-widely. It appears that the neoliberlist dries the American well to water the Chinese Communist soil. This would be too much even if the Chinese Communist were a good partner; and yet, it is hardly to believe that the Chinese Communist will not be “a great hindrance to perpetual peace” for Kantian.

To Vindicate His Helpless Right

2010-03-28T10:21:00.007-04:00

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

2010-03-14T10:21:00.012-04:00

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

2010-03-07T10:17:00.003-05:00

“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.

Common Right of the Universe

2010-01-24T10:21:00.005-05:00

This week, the Lady Secretary of State appeals the Internet Freedom. In her speech, she cites the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was worked by Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962) during her days in the United Nations.

I do admire the women’s role in social progresses. To be against the censorship by the French royal authority, Marie-Therese Rodet Geoffin (1699 – 1777) used her salon, somehow like today’s Internet, to socially assist the encyclopedists and to financially support the work of Encyclopedia. Denis Diderot (1713 – 1784, the chief editor of Encyclopedia) said,

People ask if freedom of the press is advantageous or prejudicial to a state. The answer is not difficult. It is of the greatest importance to conserve this practice in all states founded on liberty. I would even say that the disadvantages of this liberty are so inconsiderable compared to its advantages that this ought to be the common right of the universe, and it is certainly advisable to authorize its practice in all government.

Diderot’s calling for “the common right of the universe” was the prototype of today’s Universal Rights we are still fighting for.

Contrasted to Geoffin’s behind-scene contribution to the Enlightenment, Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) raised the “Woman’s Question” in the Enlightenment. She questioned, “If absolute sovereignty be not necessary in a state, how comes it to be so in a family…? … If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?” I doubt that the Confucianist could answer her questions, except for calling her a “heretic”; and I doubt that the Chinese Communist could answer her questions, except for calling her a “subversive”.

Several days ago, some Chinese websites posted the statements of one Chinese dissident who was sentenced for 11 years prison on the Christmas Day, 2009. One of those statements, the Chinese Communist court did not allow him to finish it in the court, includes his appreciation to his wife for the mutual love between both of them. His simple words are with profound affection. Who says that a rational person cannot fall in love? Isn’t because the claimers [probably including the Chinese Communist] cannot understand this kind of sublimed love?

Mercedes Sosa (1935 – 2009), “the voice for the voiceless”, was an Argentine singer who died in October. Sosa was arrested and exiled by a military regime in Argentina, but she proved “how much truth is stronger than error” (Henry Thoreau 1817 – 1862). Now, the liberty in Hong Kong is getting disturbed; a young lady, who led many legitimate protests, was reportedly detained by a felony division of Hong Kong law enforcement recently. It is not clear what kind grave crime she committed, or just the authority went too far. Someone might see her sort of controversial, like some suffragettes before. But, “who else is perfect?” is not my question, the real question here is: “Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.” (Henry Thoreau 1817 – 1862)

The Chinese Communist decries the Lady Secretary of State’s speech. It even does not want to try, or dare to try, to ascertain why the liberty is so invaluable to human beings. All the Chinese Communist wants is to grip its “absolute sovereignty”, like all other dynasties in the Chinese history. It wants an oppressed tranquility, in the name of harmony; but not a heated debate, in the name of liberty. In this fighting for the common right of the universe, are we to expect more and more the Chinese women to take part in?

An Unjust Law is No Law at All

2010-01-17T10:18:00.007-05:00

I heartily praise the Google’s new approach in China announced in this week, because it is a noble cause for Google to defend the Human Rights activists in China, to defy the censorship in China, and to denounce the organized hacking crimes in China. Google shows the world its “Don’t Be Evil” credo by confronting the Chinese Communist’s imperiousness: my way or the high way. Here, I give Google my Thank-You note; and this Muscovite of Google might already win back the due respect from Charles de Montesquieu (1689 – 1755), for he not only keeps his own liberty but also fights for others’. My regret is: this first heroic action of against the censorship in China was not taken by some major Chinese enterprises.

The Chinese Communist regime responded, “The Chinese government administers the Internet according to law and we have explicit stipulations over what information and content can be spread over the Internet.” But, this regime is a de facto, not a de jure. Should this People’s Republic be a de jure, then, according to Montesquieu, “the people are in some respects the sovereign,” thus, “[t]here can be no exercise of sovereignty but by their suffrages, which are their own will; now the sovereign’s will is the sovereign himself. The laws therefore which establish the right of suffrage are fundamental to this [republic] government.” In today’s world, China is one of a few nations that do not allow their own people to have suffrages. How come China is a People’s Republic? How come the laws in China are the just laws? Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 – 1968, a prominent Civil Rights Movement leader) said, “I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.” My regret is: I cannot recall one name of the Chinese Americans who heavily joined the Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. King.

Montesquieu said, “In despotic states, the nature of government requires the most passive obedience;” and “man is a creature that blindly submits to the absolute will of the sovereign.” This is the exact obedience what the Chinese Communist has forced the Chinese people to be. Now, it demands Google to obey the [censorship] laws in China. Many Chinese, they just like the slaves in the Allegory of the Cave, never question whether a law imposed upon them is a just law or not, and they want others, such as, Google, like themselves to be “a creature that blindly submits to the absolute will of the sovereign”. “Man’s portion here [despotism], like that of beasts, is instinct, compliance, and punishment.” said Montesquieu. My regret is: so many Chinese people who act as the slaves in the Allegory of the Cave for laughing at the returned freedman [such as, Google] and saying that he had gone up only to come back with his sight ruined.

The people in China are nowhere about their suffrages; the people in Hong Kong are fighting for their suffrages; the people in Taiwan have their suffrages. However, in this week, the Chinese PLA tested its missile interception. Its intention is clear: to bluff the world, especially Taiwan related. We saw the Chinese PLA cracked down the peaceful students’ assembly on the June Fourth Massacre in 1989; we saw the Chinese PLA invaded Vietnam, a nation has more than 2,000 years history within China, in 1979. The Chinese Communist always claims such actions for its sovereignty: China has its sovereignty to defend itself from “Vietnam’s provoking”; China has its sovereignty to bloodbath its “internal affairs”, such as, the June Fourth Massacre, etc.; China has its sovereignty upon Taiwan, humming “ready or not here I come; can’t hide from love [missile]”; and so on so forth. Montesquieu said, “A person that aspires to the sovereignty concerns himself less about what is serviceable to the state than what is likely to promote his own interest.” Now, don’t you ascertain why the Chinese Communist is so obsessing over its sovereignty talk? My regret is: so many Chinese people who tolerate the exercise of sovereignty by the Chinese Communist, but no exercise of their own suffrages at all.

Slavery in China

2010-01-10T10:25:00.003-05:00

Charles de Montesquieu (1689 – 1755), who was a widely accepted anti-slavery enlightenment thinker, had satiric comments on slavery of the colors and pungent criticism on the slavery laws. In his The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu wrote, “Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another, as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune. The state of slavery is bad of its own nature: it is neither useful to the master nor to the slaves; not to the slave, because he can do nothing thro’ a motive of virtue; not to the master, because he contracts all manner of bad habits with his slaves; he accustoms himself insensibly to the want of all moral virtues; he grows fierce, hasty, severe, choleric, voluptuous, and cruel.”

Frederick Douglass (1818? – 1895, a former slave and a prominent abolitionist) wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. In Chapter 3 of this book, Douglass told us a story which was regarded a chat between his master Colonel Lloyd and a telling-the-truth slave. Colonel Lloyd was so rich and he had some around of a thousand slaves and several plantations, so that, before the chat, both of them did not know of each other. In their seemingly casual chat, the slave told Colonel Lloyd that he was not treated fairly by his master. But, weeks later, this poor slave was traded away. “He was immediately chained and handcuffed; and thus, without a moment's warning, he was snatched away, and forever sundered, from his family and friends, by a hand more unrelenting than death. This is the penalty of telling the truth, of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain questions.” Douglass wrote; and he continued, “The frequency of this has had the effect to establish among the slaves the maxim, that a still tongue makes a wise head. They suppress the truth rather than take the consequences of telling it”. Douglass observed that “slaves are like other people, and imbibe prejudices quite common to others. They think their own [master] better than that of others.” And how the slaves bragged, quarreled and even fought for their masters. “They [slaves] seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man's slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!”

When I take Colonel Lloyd as the Chinese Communist, take that telling-the-truth slave as the Chinese dissidents, and take those ordinary slaves as those ordinary Chinese people, I see its similarity: the Chinese Communist has taken those conscientious dissidents as its properties and has done nasty things to them at its will, just for imposing its maxim that “a still tongue makes a wise head”; those unenlightened ordinary Chinese “people” are actually more like the slaves in the Allegory of the Cave; they brag, quarrel and even fight for their masters – the Chinese Communist, for “They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves.”

Montesquieu said, “In despotic countries, where they are already in a state of political slavery, … In democracies, slavery is contrary to the spirit of the constitution”, and “In all despotic governments people make no difficulty in selling themselves; the political slavery in some measure annihilates the civil liberty.” The civil liberty is indeed deprived of from those political slaves, haven’t you read the report on “[a] Chinese dissident living in legal limbo in Japanese airport” in internet? The Chinese Communist denied his right to back to China without any merits, domestic or international. Many ordinary Chinese “people” blame him bringing humiliation upon China, for they already sell themselves to the tyranny. Montesquieu said that “the Muscovites sell themselves very readily: their reason for it is evident; their liberty is not worth keeping.” My question is: Aren’t the Chinese the same notorious?

Henry Thoreau (1817 – 1862) said, “I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also. All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. … When the subject had refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the [peaceable] revolution is accomplished.” The slavery in China goes on already and it continues. In the Haven, on the Earth, even down to the Hell, why don’t abolish this political slavery in China?

Don’t Postpone the Question of Freedom to the Question of Free-trade

2010-01-03T10:21:00.006-05:00

On the December 27, 2009 the Chinese Premier (the same one in my essay “Shoe, Prostitute and Dictator”) had a rare interview with the state-run Xinhua news agency. In this more propaganda razzle-dazzle interview show, which, according to Xinhua, had nearly two months of preparation and more than 300 participants, the Premier of this People’s Republic did everything he could: defend China’s role in Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, 2009; resist the calling on Chinese Yuan appreciation; blame protectionism in trade; but no topics on freedom. The message is clear: the world is wrong, only the Chinese Communist is right; if anything goes wrong in China, blame it to the world. Many Chinese buy it for they are so eager to restore their ancient exalted position that they would rather be blind loyalists and sacrifice their freedom.

Yes, there is a voice of protectionism in America, but the free trade policies have been America’s trade policies for a long history. The Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854 played an important role in Japan’s modernization; but not the Open Door Policy in 1899, until the neoliberalism, China becomes a modernizing country except for democracy. Despite when Japan was booming, America had the Great Depression, and despite when China is booming, America has the Great Recession, the policies of free trade in America will continue. Sure, the Americans love free trade; but don’t forget that the Americans love freedom more. Protectionism is a new way referring mercantilism and China is practicing mercantilism all the time.

The Chinese Communist does not talk about freedom because it lacks conscience. The Chinese people don’t dare to talk about freedom, not because they lack conscience (although it usually needs to arouse), but the Chinese Communist doesn’t allow them to. In America, when the people’s consciences are aroused, people defend their freedom, like the Boston Massacre in 1770. That is why Henry Thoreau (1817 – 1862) focused on conscience for his appeal to anti-slavery and anti-war. He 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?” But, in China, just having conscience to fight for freedom is not enough; don’t you see those Chinese conscientious dissidents living in dungeon for their “subversive” convicts? To add courage on this cause is not enough, too; don’t you see that bloodbath on the June Fourth Massacre in 1989? An international society coalition is necessary; but it constantly pains me when an American “Yoda” was swiftly sent for these Chinese Communist butchers after the June Fourth Massacre. Consistency is essential, not only because it is a virtue, it is a duty; but also because we know that government come and government gone, it is people who are still there. With “Conscience”, “Courage”, “Coalition” and “Consistency”, the Chinese people definitely can let the Chinese Communist learn: one “subversive” convicted by the Chinese Communist is too many; one drop of blood shed by the Chinese Communist is too much; don’t “postpone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade,” (Henry Thoreau, 1817 – 1862) now.

Silence from the Chinese people and the international society only emboldens the Chinese Communist. The world saw the Chinese Communist behaved badly: It acted like a demagogue in Copenhagen 2009 with those poorer countries, even played a walkout; one of the Chinese delegates said that China came to Copenhagen was to declare, not to negotiate. This reminds me Yosuke Matsuoka (1880 – 1946) of Japan, who walked out of the League of Nations in 1933. It acted like a paranoid on the calling on the Chinese Yuan appreciation; it accused that such callings are a conspiracy to keep China under-developing, ignoring the world economy is suffering by this China’s stand. It acted like a sophist for blaming other countries playing protectionism while it itself is practicing mercantilism, and wanted free trade by postponing the question of freedom. It “plainly did not know how to treat me [a Chinese dissident], but behaved like persons who are underbred” (Henry Thoreau, 1817 – 1862): it committed the Christmas Day sentence to him in 2009. This type of done nasty things on Holiday reminds me that Huang ShiRen in the Chinese play “White-Haired Girl”, who committed horrendous things at a Chinese New Year.

Yes, the Chinese Communist is a leviathan, yet, “we do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British [now the Chinese Communist] Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.” (Henry Thoreau, 1817 – 1862)

Sovereignty, Sovereign, and Sovereigntist

2009-12-27T05:26:00.004-05:00

“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

2009-12-20T10:16:00.004-05:00

“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

2009-12-13T10:38:00.006-05:00

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

Gentleman, Please Enter the Urn

2009-06-28T10:16:00.003-04:00

“Gentleman, please enter the urn!” (qingjun ruweng in Chinese) means to trap a man with his own trick in China.

This Chinese idiom is based on a true story: once upon in China, it was under reign of Empress Wu Zetian (625 – 705, reign: 690 - 705) in Tang Dynasty. Wu had several formidable secret police officials, two of them were Lai Junchen and Zhou Xing. One day Wu assigned Lai to investigate Zhou because there were secret reports accusing Zhou of having a criminal plot. Having been good friends each other, Lai invited Zhou for a luncheon and asked him how to let the accused confess if he was unwilling to. Zhou replied: “It is easy. Get a big urn and set a char fire underneath it; then take the accused in it and he won’t be unwilling to confess anything”. After setup an urn under fire by Zhou’s instruction, Lai told Zhou: “Please enter the urn! Her Majesty let me investigate you on your criminal plot”. Zhou confessed in fear of torture. There was no evidence left in history about whether Zhou was real guilty on the charges or not, though.

Empress Wu was the only woman in Chinese history to rule China. Based on historic records, such as Zizhi Tongjian (The Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government), China was under the Terror with Secret Police in her early reign. In order to secure her power, Wu devised many copper boxes for informers to accuse on others and interviewed those informers who came forward. She gave them ride, ration, and lodge no matter the accusations were true or not, some informers, like Lai, even got promotion. According to the Book of Tang [Dynasty], “[s]oon thereafter, great accusations arose, and many innocent people were falsely accused and stuck their necks out in waiting for execution. Heaven and earth became like a huge cage, and even if one could escape it, where could he go? That was lamentable.”

Now in China, starting from this week, its Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) devises a new hot line and a website for informers to accuse the so-called possible corrupt officials secretly. It was reported that on the first day the hot line was jammed and the website was unreachable because of an extremely huge volume. I cannot fathom how many false accusations among them, but I am sure such things will happen in empiricism-wise. What intrigues me is that China already is a police state, yet it still relies on such unpromising ways to keep its ruling. It appears that either the Chinese government is at its wits’ end or the Chinese Communist wants to play a dirty political game. To resort a secret accusation is the most efficient way to purge a political rival. Yet, the damage is pervasion of fear among people. Who cares justice when fear is loaded in a society? Perhaps the Chinese people feel that it is worthy to let the SPP play “Доверяй, но проверяй” (“Trust, but verify” in English). However, “Trust, but verify” means to distrust, and in western political science “[s]ystems based on distrust simply divide [separate] the responsibility [powers] so that checks and balances can operate.” The game that the SPP plays is subject to “suspect and verify”, which leads to mistrust, even to “guilty by suspicion”.

John Locke (1632 – 1704) said that “[t]he reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion of every part and member of the society…” When so many Chinese officials are accused for corruptions, does it mean that China has fundamental problems on “laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences”? Why cannot the Chinese government give its people Habeas corpus (a Latin phrase means “that you have the body”)? Why cannot the Chinese government govern by the rule of law? Why cannot the Chinese government implement the trial by jury, even the Japanese can now? What is so terrible for people (both the accuser and the accused) to have the freedom from fear? What is so terrible for people to protect themselves by knowing their rights? What is so terrible for people to “enter into society”, instead of to “enter the urn”, with “the preservation of their property” in a proper way?

China’s Showdown with the U.S. Dollar

2009-06-21T10:21:00.005-04:00

This week many news relating to China’s currency policy came out: China increased its gold reserves; China reduced buying the U.S. Treasuries; China announced “[to] buy [made in] China”; China renewed its calling for a new “super-sovereign reserve currency” in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China, respectively) states and other regional summit meetings.

What caused China to make those moves? Having benefited from the neoliberalism, China has had a booming export industry for several decades. The Americans bought Chinese goods and paid with U.S. dollars. China normally needs to exchange the U.S. dollars for the Chinese yuan in its domestic use. When the trading deficit is becoming huge between China and America, China neither supplied enough its currency by importing goods from America nor appreciated the exchange rate of its currency in the currency exchange market. Thus, with low exchange rate to the U.S. dollar and high savings rate in its domestic money, China keeps a strong competency in its exporting trade. To stem the pressure of appreciation on the Chinese yuan, the Chinese government diverts the excess inflowing U.S. dollars to buy the U.S. Treasuries. The consequence is that China possesses nearly $2 trillion of the U.S. Treasuries, compared to $8.3 trillion U.S. M2 money supply. This is one reason some economists believe that China is a currency manipulation country, though American authority does not think so in public. This is one reason some economists believe that China holds some responsibility for this financial crisis in 2008 because China hoards too much money; yet money in this modern globalized world is called currency, and money must mobilize like a current so that the financial market will not lack its liquidity.

While America is entering this economic downturn, the Americans do not need Chinese goods as much as before. It causes a decline in China’s export to America and a decrease in the U.S. dollars inflows into China. It seems China need not have to buy the U.S. Treasuries to keep the Chinese yuan low like it did before, but the reality is not. China has to continue buying the U.S. Treasuries for a while. There is a saying that when a person owes a bank $100, that is a personal problem; but when a person owes a bank $100 million, that is the banker’s problem. The U.S. dollar is a fiat money, which is a paper money authorized by a government and based on faith not on gold. To maintain a fiat money, a government makes payment by taxation. In the near future, without taxation hikes but spending goes on, the U.S. dollar will be under pressure of depreciation. Now, it is in China’s interest to keep buying the U.S. Treasuries in order to avoid Chinese assets in America losing its value.

But the Chinese government wants the American government to guarantee the safety of its assets in America, and the American government re-assures its safety. The problem is that there is an “invisible hand” in a market, according to Adam Smith (1723 – 1790, founder of the classical liberalism). After having seen that the American government is unwilling to assure some big American companies, the Chinese government feels the boat is now too big to sail. Naturally it starts getting anxious and tries to grope every possible option to get rid of this so-called U.S. Treasuries trap. China increases gold reserves, but the entire current amount of gold in the world is less than $4.5 trillion, far from a mean for a new “super-sovereign reserve currency”. China proposes to materialize the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, SDR is an ersatz currency with very small capacity ($39.1 billion original plus $250 billion new issues by G-20 in 2009), and it is not practical to make it as a “super-sovereign reserve currency” right now even though it is supposed for every member of IMF in the future. China turns to the BRIC states and hopes these new emerging forces form a new monetary coalition, but this kind of ally could be far from a success, for there is lack of mutual trusts among them; many of them were long-time foes in history. China starts to reduce buying the U.S. Treasuries, but they must keep buying to prevent its assets from losing value. Only China has hoarded huge money in both global and domestic, despite much less U.S. dollar inflow into China. China plans to buy the made in China; China’s export is shrinking, and China never has imported an equivalent amount goods from America before. Now, many Chinese goods that used to be bought by foreigners must be bought by the Chinese, themselves.

Many Chinese feel their government is heroically challenging the financial hegemon of the U.S. dollar. They are talking about G-2 avidly instead of G-20 as if they were already seeing that their G-1 era is near. The U.S. dollar, like any other fiat moneys, including the Chinese yuan, is based on faith; there is no hegemony in U.S. dollar essentially. When the Chinese abandon their faith on the U.S. dollar, it is their choice and a free choice for all. In fact, the Chinese did abandon their faith on their own fiat money in late of 1940s. Faith is based on each free agent, not forced by Americans. In truth, the U.S. dollar is not the only international reserve currency; it has never been before and never will be. It is a fallacy to blame the U.S. dollar for this virtual frozen status of the Chinese assets in America. It is not a sanction under the American government, and it is mismanagement under the Chinese government. Adam Smith understood this American fiat currency deeply. In his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote that:

The Americans, it has been said, indeed, have no gold or silver money; the interior commerce of the country being carried on by a paper currency, and the gold and silver which occasionally come among them being all sent to Great Britain in return for the commodities which they receive from us. But without gold and silver, it is added, there is no possibility of paying taxes [to Great Britain]. We already get all the gold and silver which they have. How is it possible to draw from them what they have not?

The present scarcity of gold and silver money in America is not the effect of the poverty of that country, or of the inability of the people there to purchase those metals. In a country where the wages of labour are so much higher, and the price of provisions so much lower than in England, the greater part of the people must surely have wherewithal to purchase a greater quantity if it were either necessary or convenient for them to do so. The scarcity of those metals, therefore, must be the effect of choice, and not of necessity.

It appears to me that the depreciation of the U.S. dollar is an inevitable choice, for it is “convenient for them [Americans]” to recover American economy. Perhaps the Chinese are tilting at windmills or chasing a ghost in their showdown with the U.S. dollar. The Chinese actually should think about: why did China make its fortunes in America but not in the other BRIC states? Why does only China have this grave suffering with the U.S. dollar among the BRIC states? Why can the other three of BRIC states be democratic, but not China?

A Cyber-Taboo in China

2009-06-14T10:16:00.008-04:00

The Chinese government announced that all PC makers must install its designated anti-porn online filter software starting from July 1st, 2009 (the anniversary date of the Chinese Communist Party). I wonder whether it is a birthday present to the Chinese Communist.

This controversial decision stirs a lot of concerns, mainly on the potential censorship extensively beyond pornography (a word which “is notoriously hard to define” for some semanticists and jurists). The wily decoy is to protect minors, the same claim in the Supreme Court case of Island Trees Schools versus Pico (1982) for banning “filthy” schoolbooks. I do not want to lay my finger on the same claim further since I already have addressed it in my essay “Checks and Balances in a Law”. But I want to talk about some more American experiences.

The American law is set to protect the people, but people still have to keep fighting for their rights. Linus van Pelt, a boy from the comic strip Peanuts, said “Security, like liberty, has to be won and re-won many times.” In the Bill of Rights (ratified in 1791), the First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees the quintet of rights to the people. It reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Justice Hugo Black (1886 – 1971), one of the most notable justices for civil rights in the United States Supreme Court history, insisted on a literal and absolute interpretation on the First Amendment; the term of “Congress shall make no law…” was unequivocal to him. This is called the “First Amendment Absolutism”, and the majority of America is with his view. Black was against the so-called “First Amendment Balancing”, whose gist is that “the balance between the individual and governmental interests here at stake must be struck in favor of the latter”. Under the First Amendment Absolutism, Black opposed to limiting “subversive” speech, “whether or not such discussion incites to action, legal or illegal”; against controlling “libel” speech; and against punishing “obscene” speech, even “prurient” materials.

The ambiguousness of pornography could easily defile certain philosophies and make them expendable, such as Epicureanism, an ancient Greek philosophy founded by Epicurus (341 BC – 270 BC) and often misunderstood as sensualism. Yet, it is less on bodily pleasure, but more on spiritual happiness. According to Epicureanism, the maximum pleasure is freedom from fear, a claim which was shared by Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 – 1945, president in 1933 – 1945). Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826, president in 1801 – 1809) was a self-claimed Epicurean. Thus, it is understandable why Jefferson substituted “the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in place of John Locke’s (1632 – 1704) “the right of life, liberty, and property” when he wrote the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. It is worth to note that Stoicism, the main opponent of Epicureanism and often mistaken as asceticism and founded by Zeno (around 300 BC), played an important role in Renaissance Humanism (around 14th to 16th century). Francesco Petrarch (1304 – 1374, the father of Renaissance) was the first reviver of Stoic doctrines that believe “virtue is sufficient for happiness”.

There are two kinds of people in China: those political eunuchs who have lost their thinking abilities and fear others to think and to learn; and those political slaves who have been persecuted for thinking and speaking out and wish to think freely. Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) said that “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” The Chinese people deserve the right to doubt and to think freely for it is an entitled natural right for all human beings.

China’s Umbrella

2009-06-07T10:21:00.004-04:00

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.

Better Late Than Never

2009-05-31T10:16:00.007-04:00

Humanism is the cornerstone for western civilizations. It originates from Homeric epic, The Iliad (on Trojan War probably around 1200 BC).

In the conclusion of The Iliad, Hector of Troy, the son of King Priam, met his enemy Achilles, the Greeks’ greatest warrior, and died for his native land. Aged Priam went up to Achilles as a father, not a king, to request Hector’s body. Homer (Probably 800BC – 750 BC) described elaborately on the power of humanity:

Priam had set Achilles thinking of his own father and brought him to the verge of tears. Taking the old man’s hand, he gently put him from him; and overcome by their memories they both broke down. Priam, crouching at Achilles’ feet, wept bitterly for man-slaying Hector, and Achilles wept for his father, and then again for Patroclus [Achilles’s best friend who was killed by Hector]. The house was filled with the sounds of their lamentation. But presently, when he had enough of tears and recovered his composure, the excellent Achilles leapt from his chair, and compassion for the old man’s grey head and grey beard, took him by the arm and raised him. Then he spoke to him from his heart: “You are indeed a man of sorrows and have suffered much. How could you dare to come by yourself to the Achaean ships into the presence of a man who has killed so many of your gallant sons? You have a heart of iron. But pray be seated now, here on this chair, and let us leave our sorrows, bitter though they are, locked up in our own hearts, for weeping is cold comfort and does little good. We men are wretched things, and the gods, who have no cares themselves, have woven sorrow into the very pattern of our lives.”

Achilles returned Hector’s body to Priam and offered a grace armistice time for Trojans to honor Hector with a public funeral rite.

Now, in China, a group of grey headed women called The Tiananmen Mothers cried as loud as Priam did for the permission of honoring publicly each child of their own who died on the June Fourth Massacre in 1989. But the Chinese Communist refuses to alleviate those heart wrenching mothers like Achilles did to Priam. The Tiananmen Mothers have not gotten what they want for decades, yet Priam got what he wanted within a day. Why does the Chinese Communist deny those grief stricken mothers to honor their own children like Priam honored his son Hector? One guess is the so-called proven political correctness propaganda which the Chinese Communist is trying to sell to the world, though it never says on what grounds its political correctness been “proven”. It must not be based on humanity for I am not satisfied for the humanistic reasons of this “proven” political correctness in the Enlightenment, Renaissance, ancient Greek philosophy, and Homeric. Or, maybe I should wait for new discoveries on Neanderthal studies – were the Neanderthals more humane? The Chinese Communist talks on and off about Humanism, which generally is based on the Confucianism – a feudal liege homage that the subject shows the lord his loyalty first and the lord would grant the subject his benevolence. It is not humanity, and the humanism is about humanistic freedom which Pico della Mirandola (1463 – 1494) addressed in his Oration on the Dignity of Man, known as the humanist manifesto. It is hegemony, and the Chinese Communist rhetorically promises that it will never be a hegemon; it is supremacy, and the Chinese Communist unfortunately turns itself into a supremacist after it rules; it is slavery, and the Chinese Communist indeed is a master of the political slaves it suppresses.

Will the Chinese Communist deeply repent its conducts and respect the human dignity eventually? Probably not; the Chinese Communist has lack of enthusiasm to study humanism like Leonardo Bruni (1374 – 1444) did. When Chrysoloras (1355 – 1415) brought Greek to Florence, Bruni was studying Civil Law, but he gave himself to Chrysoloras for “[t]here are doctors of civil law everywhere; and the chance of learning will not fail thee. But if this one and only doctor of Greek letters disappears, no one can be found to teach thee.” The Chinese Communist has great love for how to snatch a title, such as who is the chief economic reformist. It argues that Deng Xiaoping (1904 – 1997) was, not Zhao Ziyang (1919 – 2005) as some western scholars assert. What is the big deal for that, for we know the idea for the so-called “Monroe Doctrine” (James Monroe, 1758 – 1831, President, 1817 – 1825) was from John Quincy Adams (1767 – 1848, President, 1825 – 1829)? It is a “make much ado about nothing” for many.

In Praise of Loneliness

2009-05-17T10:15:00.006-04:00

When the world was amazed at the movie Monsters, Inc. style quarantine for the swine flu in China, I was caught by a piece of news that most Chinese media didn’t mention: Prisoner of the State, the personal memoir of Zhao Ziyang (1919 – 2005), was out this week. It was reported that his memoir revealed his “first-person account and intimate details” on the incident of the June Fourth Massacre in 1989 and his loneliness that “The entrance to my home is a cold, desolate place” in his own words.

I praise Zhao’s loneliness for he was not intimidated by Deng Xiaoping (1904 – 1997) and Deng’s associates, “since this race of men is incredibly arrogant and touchy. For they might rise up en masse and march in ranks against me with six hundred conclusions and force me to recant. And if I should refuse, they would immediately shout ‘heretic.’ For this is the thunderbolt they always keep ready at a moment’s notice to terrify anyone to whom they are not very favorably inclined.” (Desiderius Erasmus, 1466 – 1526).

I praise Zhao’s loneliness for he echoed the dictum of Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650), “I think, therefore I am.” Henry Drummond (a character in Inherit the Wind, a movie in 1960 or play in 1955) defended a thinking man on trial, saying that he understood this kind of loneliness that “it’s the loneliest feeling in the world. It’s like walking down an empty street, listening to your own footsteps. But all you have to do is to knock on any door [such as Deng’s door] and say ‘If you let me in, I’ll live the way you want me to live and I’ll think the way you want me to think’, and all the blinds will go up and all the doors will open, and you will never be lonely, ever again.” This kind of “never be lonely” is the status quo of the Chinese elites.

I praise Zhao’s loneliness for he told himself that “no matter what, I refused to become the General Secretary who mobilized the military to crack down on students”. In my view, Zhao had some similar halos like Socrates’ (469 BC – 399 BC). Realized that the execution was pending on Leon, Socrates quietly went home alone on his way to fetch Leon by the order of the Thirty. When Socrates was a senator of Antiochis, he was, at one time, “the only one of the Prytanes who was opposed to the illegality, and I gave my vote against you; and when the orators threatened to impeach and arrest me, and have me taken away, and you called and shouted, I made up my mind that I would run the risk, having law and justice with me, rather than take part in your injustice because I feared imprisonment and death.”

I praise Zhao’s loneliness for he showed the world he was not a political party supremacist, even though he was in this supremacist organization. Similarly, Hugo Black (1886 – 1971) was a member of a race supremacist organization for a while, but he was one of most notable justices for human rights.

I praise Zhao’s loneliness for he scintillates in a dark age, especially when a "Yoda" clandestinely came to China from America to give Deng, not Zhao, his hand after the June Fourth Massacre. The consequences of the June Fourth Massacre were different from the American Boston Massacre in 1770. The Boston Massacre aroused Americans for the American Revolution, noting that the American Revolution was mainly on political, not economic and social revolution, while the June Fourth Massacre left many of the Chinese living without souls. The Boston Massacre had five civilian deaths, while the June Fourth Massacre cost hundreds, if not thousands. When the Boston Massacre’s soldiers were put on trials, John Adams (1735 – 1826; President 1797 – 1801; signed the American Declaration of Independence) defended the soldiers successfully, under a desperate petition by the soldiers. The June Fourth Massacre’s soldiers didn’t go on any trials; instead, many civilians went to prison, like Zhao, as “Prisoner of the State”.

The June Fourth Massacre made its own monument, which is “an insult to the world”. Zhao made his own monument, which is “a teardrop in my heart” for many. Will the Chinese elites make their own monument to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” like the West elites did so?

Shoe, Prostitute and Dictator

2009-02-08T10:16:00.006-05:00

The incident that happened at Cambridge University on February 2nd, 2009 caught world-wide attention. A déjà vu of shoe hurling on a former American President several months ago as a farewell kiss occurred during the speech of the Chinese Premier for “How can this University prostitute itself with this dictator?”

The Chinese government officially called it a “despicable” action, but did not mention what the shoe thrower said. Here is a jamais vu again for the Chinese government – it trickily ignored the part of information to hype the people’s patriotism up. Under this flag of patriotism, many Chinese people are furious with this shoe thrower, whereas they were jubilant with the first shoe thrower before. I don’t know if the Chinese people would calm down a little bit if they got the full information. By an old and obsolete custom of throwing stones at a prostitute, not a prostitute-customer, this shoe should be aimed at Cambridge University, for the shoe thrower believed this University acted like a “prostitute”; so far this University has not admitted to having such a “prostitute” conduct with the “dictator”, but claimed where it is a place for “debate”. Prostitution is a conduct without love but for money. I wonder if this University will clarify her chastity whether this engaged “debate” was based on love, or money, or whatsoever. I doubt the Chinese people will still be so angry if this shoe was not hurled to the “dictator”.

Many Chinese people are caught by off guard on this incident for they are living in the Allegory of the Cave. The state of mind that they regard their rulers as the symbol of state is just the same as the Chinese rulers regard themselves: “L'état, c'est moi” (“I am the state” in English). The Chinese rulers have usurped the power from the Chinese people for a long history, and they never return it back to the people. Is there any covenant between the rulers and the people for the rulers to represent the people? Is there a free election for a constituent to choose a representative on behalf of him or her? We saw this Premier of China talked about “democracy” and “election” with his intact supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party during his trip to Britain. It appears to me that he was not on the same page with the right side of history; my understanding (derived from Charles de Montesquieu, 1689 – 1755) is that in democracies, such a party supremacy, like slavery and race supremacy, is contrary to the spirit of the constitution. We saw those Chinese students who came to the West and attended that event at the auditorium of Cambridge University show little interest in learning the essence of the Western democracy, but have a great passion to enchant the supremacist. We saw some Chinese falsely claimed he or she represented all of the Chinese people to kick someone’s butt or to sue someone in the other incidents. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that such kinds of persons usually don’t know what they talk about. In the movie Forrest Gump, Forrest said “Shit happens.” When a discord is so intensified, “shoe happens”, and it will not be under your control; the world just witnessed the third shoe hurled out. Francesco Petrarch (1304 – 1374), the father of Renaissance, once on the ignorance of the Medieval Ages and said that “You see that I cannot speak of these matters without the greatest irritation and indignation.” When the Chinese people could not understand the indignation of those shoe throwers, but only pity for their own anger, they will never know who John Brown (1800 – 1859) was. I don’t agree this kind of shoe hurling from the very beginning, with the first shoe, not because of the first shoe was for an American President. If this second shoe was indeed hurled at the “dictator”, or the “prostitute”-customer, it would be a surprising custom change; and I doubt this shoe would break though the Bamboo Curtain.

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527), the founder of modern political science, said in his The Prince – known as a mainstay of the western college bookstores, “that there are two methods of fighting, the one by law, the other by force: the first method is that of men, the second of beasts; but as the first method is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second.” I exhort the Chinese government to initiate its political reform. The sooner, the better for it is a common sense: the darker it is getting, the more beasts will come out. When the Chinese government is disaccording with the right side of history and especially lack of the checks and balances in its laws for “men”, the world won’t be surprised that the “beasts” will fight along with “men” against injustice in China. Is it a presque vu? No one knows.

Shepherd, Sheep, and Wolf

2009-01-25T10:15:00.007-05:00

I watched CCTV-4 (aka, China Central Television) news; the reporter said the President-elect Barak Obama (1961 - , his Presidency, 2009 - ) repeated the train route from Philadelphia to Washington, DC on January 17th, 2009, as President Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865, his presidency, 1861 -1865) did in 1861. It is more accurate to say Obama publicly finished the journey which Lincoln did not go though. In truth, Lincoln left the train at Philadelphia and secretly entered Washington, DC for an intelligent report indicated there was an assassination plot against his life in Baltimore.

Shortly after the Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment in 1864, which was ratified in 1865 and totally abolished slavery, Lincoln went back to Baltimore first time since 1861 and made a short speech, which some historian regarded as one of his best speeches, but least known. In this speech, Lincoln said that “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty. We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.” He further clarified that “The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as a destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep is a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty.” The slavery abolishment costs America heavily, but the Union is preserved and the Nation moves forward.

There was an incident that many Chinese do not know of. In 1855, Charles Sumner (1811 – 1874), a slavery abolitionist and a senator from Massachusetts, was beaten unconsciously on the Senate floor with a cane by Preston Brooks (1819 – 1857), a congressman from South Carolina. It took three years for Sumner to recover from that beating. Brooks was regarded a hero and re-elected by his voters, while Sumner was regarded a martyr and re-elected by his voters. Lincoln’s metaphor exactly described this difference of “liberty”.

Many Chinese are discouraged by seeing the brawls in some assemblies in Asian, and conclude that democracy is not suitable to China; the Chinese government is more than eager to emphasize such congressional ugliness for its own interests. To make myself clear, I absolutely denounce such violence in congress; but they do not want to admit that democracy is a long journey, even in America. Rome was not built in one day, was it?

Charles de Montesquieu (1689 – 1755), who was a widely accepted anti-slavery enlightenment thinker and regarded as the father of liberalism by some, separated slavery into two categories: one is the state of political slavery, and the other is the state of civil slavery. He said that “In despotic countries, where they are already in a state of political slavery, … In democracies, slavery is contrary to the spirit of the constitution”. When democracy is rejected by the Chinese government, the inequality among the Chinese people is preserved. The Chinese Communist Party is indeed a master of a kind of political slaves – the exiled dissents. Those exiled dissents could not redeem their divested liberty to settle down back in China, they even could not be allowed to make a family reunion in China, whether the members of their families in China are dying or not, whether those exiled dissents are dying or not. Those political slaves of the Chinese Communist Party remind me some prominent Renaissance thinkers who had experienced exile: Francesco Petrarch (1304 – 1374), the father of Renaissance and the first modern man, was a born exile with his parents; Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527), the founder of modern political science, was exiled and imprisoned for a time, like some Chinese exiled dissents; Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463 – 1494), the author of humanist manifesto, was a self-exile (fled from persecution) and imprisoned for a time, like some of the Chinese exiled dissents who fled out of China after June Fourth Massacre in 1989. But these above mentioned Renaissance thinkers were re-accepted by churches of the Medieval Ages afterwards. Despite to be called the Dark Ages by Petrarch and bitterly criticized by Machiavelli, the churches of Medieval Ages even gave both of them the ceremonious funerals after they died. By contrast, is it the era of Chinese Communist darker than the Medieval Ages? Who will be the shepherd for those political slaves of the Chinese Communist Party?

The Chinese Communist is so paranoid that it is afraid of hearing the word of “dissent” for it censored the communism and dissent parts from President Obama’s inaugural speech; yet it defended its awkward behavior as exercising its “editorial rights”. The freedom of press is in America’s Bill of Rights, it means a free, but responsible, press right. The freedom of press is rooted from the case of Cosby versus Zenger. John Peter Zenger (1697 – 1746) was accused for libel in his The New York Weekly Journal by the Governor of the New York and New Jersey, William Cosby; but jury found Zenger not guilty, for they were convinced that a newspaper could have a right for expressing whatever it wishes, as long as what it expressed was true. This was jury nullification at that time. When the CCTV manipulated information and distorted the facts around Obama and other matters, do you believe a jury – the people, will find CCTV not guilty? When the spokeswoman of China talked about the free “editorial rights” for throwing contempt to a challenge, didn’t she act as one of the slaves in the Allegory of the Cave for laughing at the returned freedman and saying that he had gone up only to come back with his sight ruined? When Montesquieu said that “We see in the history of China a great number of laws to deprive eunuchs of all civil and military employments; … It seems as if the eunuchs of the east were a necessary evil”, will Chinese examine what else evils living in its culture or simply label him an anti-Chinese?

Checks and Balances in a Law

2009-01-18T10:23:00.006-05:00

A harmonious society is a utopian society, which is more wishful than realistic. In any societies, human beings will encounter many unexpected social challenges.

Once in a common conversation, an ordinary American woman remarked that the Chinese children have a lot of discipline. How true it is, the discipline and law embody the father’s, teachers’, and government’s punishments for the Chinese starting their childhood in a long history; in contrast, the American regard law as a protection of their natural rights, such as, freedom.

America is a common law country, except Louisiana State which is a civil law state. The common law is a judge-made law and is from England; the civil law is the code-based or statutory law and is derived from Code Napoleon [Bonaparte] (1769 – 1821) of France. Jurist Billings Learned Hand (1872 – 1961) once wrote “The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it.” So, one does not have to be an articulate and literate person to exercise the law.

In the case of Gideon versus Wainwright (1963) for the Fair Trials, Clarence Earl Gideon (1910 – 1972) in Florida was a poor man with only eight years in school, but he won the right for himself and all of American. Gideon was under arrest in 1961 for a charge of having broken and entered a poolroom with intent to commit a crime. Without money and without a lawyer, he asked the court to appoint a lawyer for him; and his request was denied by the court. He then defended for himself, but the jury found him guilty and he was sentenced for five years in prison by the judge. In his handwritten petition (Note: a typed one was required usually), he wrote “I, Clarence Earl Gideon, claim that I was denied the rights of the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the Bill of Rights.” The United States Supreme Court affirmed his rights and further noted that “The right of one charged with crime to counsel may not be deemed fundamental and essential to fair trials in some countries, but it is in ours.” Gideon got a retrial with a lawyer and was acquitted the charge on him.

In the case of Island Trees Schools versus Pico (1982) for Banning “Filthy” Schoolbooks, then seventeen years old student Steven Pico of New York, along with four other teenagers, 14 to 16 years old, sued the school board for pulling eleven titles from the school library shelves, and demanded the school board to return the banned books to the library in 1976, The school board regarded the removed books as “anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy,” and said that “[i]t is our duty, our moral obligation, to protect the children in our schools from this moral danger as surly as from physical and medical dangers.” Immanuel Kant (1724 -1804) opposed such a similar guardianship, he said by placing one age guardianship as a constant for the succeeding ages, “it would be impossible for the later age to expand its knowledge (particularly where it is so very important), to rid itself of errors, and generally to increase its enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature.” Based on the interpretation of law, not Kant’s saying, though, the Supreme Court granted the students’ petition in 1982, and affirmed further “In brief, we hold that local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’ Such purposes stand inescapably condemned by our precedents.”

The duties of the Supreme Court are to interpret and explain the laws. However, the jury is a core component in the West legal system; it is included in both the common law system and the statutory law system. Trial by Jury in a legal procedure was brought by the Normans in the middle of the twelfth century, and has been ingrained in the Western people. Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826) enumerated without Trial by Jury as a reason for American Revolution in the American Declaration of Independence. One power of jury is jury nullification. Jury has been regarded as the last resort and the last check and balance for protecting the rights of citizens, by checking on the judiciary for against a judge’s prejudices and an unjust law.

The law in China is set for protecting its government, not its citizens. There is a charge called “Subversion” for jailing those conscientious people. Its internal political struggling is so brutal that nobody has the due process in a legal protection. It is clear that in China there is no the writ of Habeas Corpus (a Latin phrase means “that you have the body”), which was enacted in Britain as early as in 1215; no jury in the legal procedure, which was brought by Normans in middle of 12th century; and no the rule of due process, which was enforced in a Code of Criminal Instruction by Napoleon of France in 1808. Without the jurors from the local common citizens and the jury nullification, the Chinese government can be easier than a piece of cake to convict any persons it charges, for it has a whole legal system to serve itself, including its courts, prosecutors, and policemen. However, the Chinese government feels itself so arrogant that it can abuse the extra powers out of its legal system; it detains its suspects for “investigation in designated time and designated place” (Shuanggui in Chinese). It is extremely difficult in China to vindicate defendants from the subversion and such accusations in the un-“Fair Trials”, and to restraint the eagerness of the Communist to “prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”

Why has China not had Trial by Jury after nearly one thousand years since it appeared in the West? Is it possible because the Chinese government is so paranoid that it is afraid the jury will nullify its legitimacy in order to “rouze themselves [people], and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected” (John Locke, 1632 -1704)? Is it possible because the Chinese elites are so conceit that “They rejoice in their ignorance, as if what they did not know were not worth knowing” (Francesco Petrarch, 1304 – 1374)? Is it possible because the Chinese people are in the Allegory of the Cave so long time that they, “Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature” (Immanuel Kant, 1724 -1804)?

Checks and Balances in a Republic

2009-01-11T10:19:00.007-05:00

Checks and Balances in a government also mean the Separation of Powers, but this separation doesn’t mean the powers in an absolute independence from one another. Instead, it aims to let different powers work together efficiently.

Renaissance thinker Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) first introduced this concept. Some regard him as the founder of modern political science. After the Medieval Ages (476 – 1453), the Church was too weak to protect the Italian state from being captured by foreigners one after another. Witnessing the turmoil and agonies, Machiavelli was convinced the importance of the political stability in government, especially in a republic government.

In his work: Discourses Upon the First Ten Books of Titus Livius, Machiavelli examined six kinds of governments: Monarchy, Aristocracy, Democracy; and Tyranny, Oligarchy, Anarchy. He reserved the first three as the good forms, and regarded the last three as the bad forms. In Greek, monarchy means one power; aristocracy means best to rule; democracy means people to rule; and tyranny means tyrant to rule; oligarchy means few powers; anarchy means no power. Machiavelli did the thought experiments for a government in each form: starting with a good monarch, and then succeeded by tyrants, the monarchy degrades into tyranny; the tyrant is then overthrown by a group of aristocrats, the tyranny becomes aristocracy; the aristocrats are succeeded by the corrupted generations, the aristocracy degenerates into oligarchy; the oligarchy then is ended by the people, the oligarchy turns into democracy; and the popular democracy then lapses into anarchy. He observed that “all kinds of government are defective”, and “they will be apt to revolve indefinitely in the circle of revolutions.” Feeling sorry for the three good kinds of governments had too short-lived, and impressed by Sparta had lasted more than eight hundred years, he concluded that the best government for a republic would be to combine all three good kinds of governments together, and keep them in Checks and Balances. He said: “In fact, when there is combined under the same constitution a prince, a nobility, and the power of the people, then these three powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check.” Thus, the strength of the republic is vitalized by a tripartite state of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Machiavelli’s republic government form is the prototype of the modern republics.

Whither China? It seems to me this People’s Republic is at the second stage in Machiavelli’s thought experiment of government by one, by few and by many circle. Will China bring the first and third good kinds of governments into its system to reform a republic with the Checks and Balances? Probably not; it appears to me that the Chinese elites are more willing to serve their rulers than to share the powers with the people. The Chinese people have been suppressed and regarded as inferior by the rulers and their bureaucrats for a long history; they have always been requested and reminded to be grateful to their rulers, although, based on the assessment of Machiavelli, the vice of the ingratitude is generally from the rulers. My question (derived from the Euthyphro Dilemma) is the Chinese people should be grateful for “what” – is something grateful because the Communist Party rules it, or does the Communist Party rules it because it’s grateful? An alternative avenue to a republic for China is the America’s three branches government system in the Separation of Powers, which was advocated by John Locke (1632 – 1704). Can this emerge? Probably not, either; at this American system was once laughed by Deng Xiaoping (1904 – 1997). Besides, don’t forget that Communism is totalitarianism; and it is never shameful for the avarice of powers, and instead, it fears to lose its powers. Deng committed bloodshed in 1989 to stay his power. A higher probability would be this People’s Republic circles down the third form of Democracy by the people’s arousing, or reverses back to the first form of monarchy by an ironhanded man. The democracy, which has never happened before in Chinese history, might be not a bad experience for the Chinese; Machiavelli said “the governments of the people are better than those of princes.” Note that Democracy in the modern West means the political equality for all. It is interesting that many Chinese people, not just those bureaucrats, prefer an ironhanded ruler, like Deng. Deng ruled China as a power broker, he never had a legal title during his ruling, yet after his death for more than a decade, he seemed to be still ruling China, for the Chinese Communist Party has not corrected the blunder of June Fourth Massacre he committed. Deng must feel pleasures when he persecuted, jailed, exiled his conscientious political enemies, and did bloodshed in the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979 and in the June Fourth Massacre in 1989. Such a kind of tyrant’s happiness even perplexed Plato (428 BC – 347 BC), for he lamely used the Myth of Er to condemn the tyrannical personalities. But Aristotle (384 BC – 322BC), Plato’s own student, claimed that “the happy life is life free and unhindered and according to virtue”. It is apparent to me that Deng’s life was without virtue but only free for himself. What can you expect from the obscurant government, the obsequious elites and the obedient people for China?

Should the Chinese worry about American military existence in the west Pacific?

2009-01-04T10:17:00.005-05:00

The Chinese government seems not at ease with the American military presence in the west Pacific Ocean, for America looks not friendly to the Communist China in the recent history: America supported the rival of the Communists during the civil war in China (1946 -1949). In addition, America had the Korean War (1950 -1953) and the Vietnam War (1954 -1975), both were China related, more or less.

The Chinese people should look the bright side regarding the American military presence in the west Pacific. During World War II (1939 – 1945), had American military not been present in this region and blocked Japan from getting the resources it desperately needed, Japan might not have to wage the Pacific War (1941 – 1945) with America. The Japanese invaded China and believed they could conquer the Chinese, for the Chinese had already been conquered by Mongolian in 1279 and Manchu in 1644 before. The Chinese Communist Party over exaggerates its merits for repelling the Japanese out of China. In fact, the decisive battles were won by the Americans and the Russians.

China is pursuing its mighty economy and military success, and I give my good wishes as long as its people and others are no longer hurt. However, I believe that, without political freedom, the success of economy and military could not bring a blessing to the Chinese people and others. Remember, the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979 and the June Fourth Massacre in 1989, the main beneficiary from those bloodsheds was Deng Xiaoping (1904 – 1997). The Chinese Communist Party takes all credits for the China’s economy booming, and hardly mentions its benefit from the economic globalization advocated by the neoliberalism. Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), the founder of the classic liberalism, believed that the government cannot make wealth, but market can, such as, goods, labor, and trade. Regarding the government with few roles in economy, he further pointed out that the monetary reserve could not increase the national wealth. Keynesian has a different view on the role of government, though.

In retrospect, there are numbers of booming economy and strong military periods in China, but such periods were usually short termed. The Chinese Golden Age in the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907) is the Chinese’s favorite, while few Chinese know of the Islamic Golden Age (750 -1258), it had achieved more than the Chinese golden ages’ in many aspects. The Chinese Golden Age virtually ended after the An Shi Rebellion (755 – 763). Emperor Tang Xuanzong – Li Longji (685 – 762) took reign from 712 to 756, and reached the culmination of its golden age. During the An Shi Rebellion, the Chinese suffered chaos so bad that they even could not protect its capital, Chang’an; the Tibetans dishonored a peace treaty with Tang Dynasty and captured Tang’s capital for fifteen days in 763. The kingdom of Tibet only held the treaty accountable when the Chinese Tang Dynasty was strong. Note that the current Tibet issue is actually an effect after the Great Game, which mainly involved the region by the British and the Russians in 1907, even back to the year1813.

After World War I (1914 – 1918), as Germany recovered and succeeded both in economy and military, so did Japan. However, America was in the deep trouble of the Great Depression (1929 -1939). Total recovery for America was not achieved until the 1950s. The Great Depression was much worse than the current recession in 2008 and America’s military was not as strong as the Axis, but America had a better political system, and finally prevailed in both European and Pacific theaters. The mighty, from economy and military but lack of political freedom, just could not remain longer. Furthermore, the Might makes Right was not the only theme in the Melian Dialogue. Comparing to the Axis, America has a more reliable introspection system. This system includes, but not limits to: checks and balances, the writ of Habeas corpus (Latin means “that you have the body”), freedom of speech, and suffrage for its citizens.

The American people have had a long anti-war history, fighting only when they feel a real threat. There are many anti-war activists during every single American-involved war, including the American Civil War. Not always invading, America also protected other countries as a world leader. Zhang Hanzi (1935 -2008), the English interpreter for Richard Nixon (1913 – 1994, his presidency during 1969 – 1974), once recalled during Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 that an American officer suggested America would like to provide or assist the security for China. However, Zhou Enlai (1898 – 1976) dismissed that topic. This incident shows American’s goodwill. I don’t know the reasons that caused Zhou to reject America’s proposal. A guess is because of the Chinese sovereignty awareness, and I respect it. But the fact is, after Nixon’s visit, Chinese and Americans did establish close military ties resulting from their mutual interests.

I would like to see the Chinese government initiate a reasonable political reform, while it achieves reform in economy and military. A much fairer political system is good for both the Chinese people and their international affairs.

Science, Scientist and Scientific Development Concept

2008-12-28T10:18:00.009-05:00

It seems to me that people in every spectrum like the topics about science, for our everyday life is profoundly influenced by it. One could easily find that such science enthusiastic people include but not limit to: philosophers from religionists to atheists, politicians from capitalists to communists, scholars from pundits to pupils, activists from proponents to detractors. I wonder whether United Nations should amend its Universal Value by adding science in, for apparently everyone recognizes the value of science.

The definition of science is changing from time to time, and it appears that it has not reached a consensus one, and might never reach a consensus one. This elusiveness might just provide a unique reason for different people to adapt different science concept in their own ways. Modern science separates itself from the occult; in Isaac Newton’s (1642 – 1727) time, it was common for researchers to study both science and alchemy, though. In fact, Newton studied on alchemy for most of his life.

The word scientist was coined by William Whewell (1794 – 1866) in 1833; therefore, Newton was obviously never called as a scientist at his lifetime. But it does not bother for some historians’ enthusiasm to pick the first scientist; they generally honored this title to Ibn al-Haytham (965 – 1039) at Islamic golden age (8th century – 13th century), for his scientific method was pervaded in modern science. Someone may argue: what about Newton, for so many Enlightenment thinkers utilized Newton’s scientific methods to unfetter human Reason. The fact is Isaac Newton could hardly be called a scientist in modern science view. I absolutely regard Newton as one of the greatest scientists if he himself had no objection to be called a scientist. But Newton’s two most important contributions, calculus and laws of gravity, could not belong to modern science. His gravity theory was benefitted from his occult studies on action at a distance, and his calculus is Mathematics. Modern science rules both Mathematics and the occult out of itself.

The idea that science is “what” has actually become much less popular now. However, in China, science has never lost its utilization for politics. Has asserted that China under its ruling is a Scientific Socialism, the Communist Party now wages propaganda on the Scientific Development Concept (Kexue Fazhan Guan in Chinese). The “Scientific Socialism” was phrased by Friedrich Engels (1820 - 1895) to distinguish it from the “utopian socialism”, it is not amenable to scientific examination whether in theory or in practice. I realized Physicist Fang Lizhi (1936 - ) advocated Kexue Fazhan Guan back to 1980s, yet I wonder whether and when the Communist Party shares the same Concept with Fang; if not, it appears not to bother any troubles for the Communist to grab the same name of Fang’s Concept, just as a totalitarian does. Why not? They already deprived Fang of everything by exiling him in 1989. For science, when a subject is 100 percent predictable, that is a law of nature; when a subject is highly predictable, that is a law of averages. Here, precision and predictability have the most certainty. I don’t know what the “Scientific” certainty by the communism is. Would this “scientific” certainty carry out the writ of Habeas corpus (a Latin phrase, as “that you have the body”) or the Checks and Balances? If not, the Chinese people will still live in fear without dignity. The Chinese government claims that it is also ruling with Humanism (yiren weiben or renben zhuyi in Chinese), which would provide some compensations to its people plausibly. My understanding is that this so-called Humanism by Chinese Communist is not on the same page with the Renaissance Humanism. In Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s (1463 – 1494) Oration on the Dignity of Man, which is regarded as the humanist manifesto, he declared: [Human beings] “Thou, constrained by no limits, in accordance with thine own free will, in whose hand We have placed thee, shalt ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature.” This meant to human beings “with freedom of choice and with honor…thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer”. Isn’t it a profanity to the name of Mirandola when the Chinese government claims that its people live in humanism but without the dignity of freedom? This reminds me that during the French Revolution (1787 – 1799, 1789 was a climax), France was under the Reign of Terror. The revolutionist Maximilien Robespierre (1758 – 1794), Mr. The Incorruptible, did bloodshed to any counter-revolutionary suspects he accused, yet he called it Terror with Virtue. When Chinese government deprives its people of freedom and persecutes its conscientious people, doesn’t it mean the Chinese people live under the Terror with “Scientific” Humanism?

China, a Peoples’ Republic?

2008-12-21T10:33:00.006-05:00

In China, one could be threatened, persecuted, prosecuted, arrested, or exiled for talking about democracy. Instead, one could talk about republic (Gonghe in Chinese) since China is self-claimed a Peoples’ Republic country.

I vaguely remember when I was young I once asked someone, “What is a republic”, because nobody had ever explained to me what one was. I could not recall whether I received an answer or could not understand the answer. Anyway, I interpreted gonghe as harmony, verbatim et literatim. It was a comfortable explanation for me at that time.

After coming to America, I did not give much thought on the subject of a republic. To me, it is the name for a political party; its meaning did not seem to be too important. While preparing for my naturalization interview, I learned about it from the “Quick Civic Lessons” about America. I was not aware that America is actually a Republic, like China. What a surprise this was to me. In my knowledge, America was famous for its democracy. I realized that I was wrong about the definition of republic for so many years, like one who was in the Allegory of the Cave. For America, a Republic is, “When a country’s political power comes from the citizens, not the rulers, and is put into use by representatives elected by the citizens.” Note that this statement was quoted from the “Quick Civic Lessons”; it is not at all written to be against China, but for all immigrants with a desire to be American citizens. The name of the United States of America does not mention if it is a democracy or a republic, yet America has the Checks and Balances, a concept for structuring a republic by the Renaissance thinker Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527). I cannot help but feel ridiculous for those countries whose names include the words “republic” or “democracy”, but in truth are subject to an absolutist, if not a totalitarian.

Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679) was a pro-absolutist. In his work on Leviathan, he addressed that the only way to establish an absolute Common Power or Sovereign Power is for people to reach a Covenant of every man with every man, to say to one another mutually, ‘I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner.’ Therefore, the Person who carries the power is called Sovereign. In Hobbes’s view, as many Chinese people share the same view, only under this absolute ruler, people could be secured enough to pursue their personal interests. Yet he rejected the Monarch from God, for “there is no Covenant with God”, and “this pretence of Covenant with God is so evident a [lie]”. I don’t know when and how the Chinese people had a Covenant with the absolutist, or be subordinated to the totalitarian. In truth, John Locke (1632 – 1704) contradicted Hobbes’s absolutism, said that “all mankind in general, it can have no other end or measure, when in the hands of the magistrate, but to preserve the members of that society in their lives, liberties, and possessions;” that meant human beings initially never had a Covenant with any government to hand out their natural rights voluntarily and consciously.

The Chinese government’s power comes from the ruling party —nobody can deny this fact. The government claims it cares about the rights of the citizens, but presently, it cares only the right of life by feeding its citizens. Other rights, like liberty or the Checks and Balances, cannot be considered at the present; its citizens must wait for those other rights to be granted until China is richer and stronger. It seems to me the Chinese are glad to be fed for their lives, and are willing to wait for other rights of freedom to be granted. Why not? If “heaven can wait”, as someone says, let us wait for that day to happen.

Why shouldn’t the Chinese worship Confucius?

2008-12-14T10:35:00.007-05:00

The Chinese have had a long history for worshiping Confucius (551 BC – 479 BC), and built so many temples for him. Confucius has been considered as a saint, for he had accomplished so much in his lifetime: compiled The Spring and Autumn Annals, opened a school, created the sect of the Confucianism, been a senior administrator of his state, gained fame for his wisdom, and influenced generations of elites.

Should all the above deeds award Confucius temples for worship? In the West, people worship Jesus for religious belief. But, in western scholars’ view, Confucius’s teachings were essentially non-religious. His disciples were taught majorly on poetry, history, ritual, music, and ethics, but were required to keep away from the spirits and deities, at least at a distance. Confucius talked about Heaven sometimes, but never pursued the spiritual world like afterlife in religious aspect. He was a social activist, rather than a religious leader. Worship is for spirits in religions, not for prophets or philosophers. How could a secular scholar be worshiped in a religious ceremony?

Confucius was a conformist. His teachings were debated for centuries; his philosophy is hardly accepted by iconoclasts. Confucius’s teachings were considered humanism, but it was based on the rulers’ benevolence, not the rulers’ power balance; he regarded king’s divine right above man’s divine right; his dictums, such as, “King is king, vassal is vassal, father is father, and son is son” and “Under Heaven, only women and ignoble men are difficult to be tempered”, created man-made inequality among people. In contrast, it is a common sense for the Christian West that all individuals are equal in God’s eyes. Confucius’s teaching cannot inspire his followers to make a writ like Habeas Corpus (a Latin phrase, as “that you have the body”). He advocated a social harmony, but that was more wishful than realistic when a ruler lacked checks and balances. His theory is so controversial that it incurred many fiascos with massive destructions during social transitions. Confucianism did not bless the Chinese people well, and did not work in retrospect. How could a disputed philosopher be worshiped in a religious ceremony?

Confucius was a character defected politician at least in modern standard; he could hardly be considered as a statesman. Confucius’s teachings are considered anti-despotism. However, when he had political power, he acted like a tyrant; he executed Sau-Zhen-Mau, a scholar with different philosophy from Confucius’s. I realize that some of Confucius admirers deny this incident now, even though the execution was praised by Confucius’s followers for thousands of years. The charges on Sau-Zhen-Mau were ironically similar to the Socrates’ (469 BC – 399 BC). In the West, threatening intellectuals would be condemned, while the sacrificed intellectuals would be commemorated as martyrs of conscience like Socrates. How can the Chinese forsake the martyr, Sau-Zhen-Mau, but worship the killer Confucius?

Confucius deserves respect for his contribution to the Chinese culture. However, what the Chinese really need is the enlightenment to open mind, not the sentiment to worship Confucius. Immanuel Kant (1724 -1804) recognized “Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity”, and “All that is required for this enlightenment is freedom”; He claimed a public enlightenment can only come true slowly, and he realized that the enlightenment was a daunting work, for the isolated individuals “through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature.” Yet he didn’t think that through revolution the state of mind of public could be changed truly, instead, he believed that the new prejudices would simply replace the old ones.

Unlike Confucius’s peregrinations, Kant was never really out of town. He did not found a school, either. In fact, he was a lecturer working 26 -28 hours a week without salary for 15 years; his income was utterly from the attendees to his lectures. Now in honor of him, there is a University under his name in Russia. Kant had a deeper understanding on human nature. He was against a constant guardianship for all times, whether it was ratified by the supreme power, by parliaments or not. He believed that by placing one age guardianship as a constant for the succeeding ages, “it would be impossible for the later age to expand its knowledge (particularly where it is so very important), to rid itself of errors, and generally to increase its enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature”. Isn’t it a crime when the Chinese government sponsors and promotes the Confucianism worldwide, meanwhile, suffocates the tinge of freedom?

When Will the People in China Gain Habeas Corpus?

2008-12-07T10:14:00.005-05:00

In America, Habeas corpus (a Latin phrase means “that you have the body”) “as is even known to women and toddlers” (a Chinese saying or idiom, and it is a typical Chinese discrimination on one’s sex and age). It means nobody can restrict your personal liberty without due process of law. The earliest version of Habeas corpus appeared in British’s Magna Charta (a Latin phrase means “Great Charter”) in 1215. It stated that “No free man shall be seized, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or injured in any way, nor will we enter on him or send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.” The idea of due process of law was also from Magna Charta; it is best known as one governed by law, not by man.

Habeas corpus is considered as the most important human right in the Constitution of the United States. It enhances the power of judicial branch, not executive branch in the government. When “you have the body”, your right of “pursuit of happiness” is truly protected, unless your happiness endangers others; when “you have the body”, your right to “freedom of speech” is truly protected, unless your speech endangers others; when “you have the body”, your right to be “against every government on earth” (words from Thomas Jefferson, 1743 – 1826) is truly protected, unless your opposition is not peaceful.

Why did British King John grant such a great right to his people? The fact is, this right was fought out by king’s resentful barons for tax relief. The rebellious barons requested the power weakening king to guarantee their rights, and won. What were the Chinese doing at that period of time? The Chinese Song Dynasty (960 – 1279) was weakening, losing its empire to the northern minorities. First it was threatened by Liao Dynasty (907 – 1125), then lost most of land to Jin Dynasty (1115 – 1234), and finally eliminated by Yuan Dynasty (1271 – 1368). Chinese elites did not act like their counterparts in British, demanding the weakening emperors a grant for their own political rights. Instead they acted like the elites in other Chinese Dynasties and begged the emperors to be merciful on them. Sima Guang (1019 -1086) even wrote his history book Zizhi Tongjian (The Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government) to the Emperor, hoping that the ruler would treat people kindly. I read most of the Modern Chinese Edition of Zizhi Tongjian, translated by Bo Yang (1920 – 2008); what impressed me is the Chinese people’s suffering and the rulers’ cruelness in every period of ancient China. Furthermore, Confucius (551 BC – 479 BC) and his disciples had already done the exactly same thing by writing the book, the Spring and Autumn Annals1,500 years previous to that event. However, the emperors kept failing the people. The Chinese people had never successfully and efficiently protected themselves by restraining the rulers’ power at law. That is the reason so many Chinese people never heard of the existence of Habeas corpus in this world. And by contrast, almost every Chinese knows the Confucius’s doctrine, “King is king, vassal is vassal, father is father, and son is son”. What the Chinese elites wanted people to be exactly as the rulers wanted people to be, which is to be absolutely obedient the rulers. They usually did not care much about the cost people had taken as long as the ruler’s Dynasty can be kept. They dreamed one day in China there would be an enlightened ruler with strong army to protect public safety, by then the Chinese would get more freedom; Immanuel Kant (1724 -1804) described the consequence of this scenario: the enlightened ruler would order his people that “Argue as much as you want and about what you want, but obey!” Would this be what the Chinese elites were dreaming about after they advocated preserving king’s divine right by sacrificing man’s divine right? I don’t know when the Chinese elites lost their conscience and how they lost their conscience. My guess is that they might never really have had a conscience. I would be more than happy to offer my apology for my ignorance if there indeed is an elite with conscience. I do believe that there exist some elites may win my respect, but not my apology, for the Chinese people have not gained the Habeas corpus yet.

Although almost another 800 years has passed, China still has not adapted the writ of Habeas corpus seriously. When Professor Fang Lizhi (1936 - ) was exiled by Deng Xiaoping (1904 – 1997) in 1989, did anyone question that the exile of a person should be based on the writ of Habeas corpus and he deserved due process? When Mr. Chen Liangyu (1946 - ), the highest-rank communist officer charged as corrupt, was detained for “investigation in designated time and designated place” (Shuanggui in Chinese) before he had a trial in a court, did anyone question that detaining a person should be based on the writ of Habeas corpus, and he deserved due process? I have no intention of defending Mr. Chen for his conducts. However, I am losing my confidence in China for if a high-ranked officer like Mr. Chen could not get the writ of Habeas corpus, what about the ordinary people?

I do believe that China has lost a golden chance for enacting the writ of Habeas corpus. For many times of suffering the political detention, Deng Xiaoping did not correct such an error of detention without law by Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976). Instead, he repeated the same action of Mao, further jailing or exiling his prominent political enemies without due process of law. Deng should not do that for his own experience sake, but he did. I wonder if he ever heard the writ of Habeas corpus, yet I doubt he would respect the writ even if he knew, since he had once laughed at America’s three branches of government system. He neither understood nor believed in human rights at all.

Freedom of speech is a vital human right

2008-11-30T10:29:00.008-05:00

Freedom of speech is an important right in America, found in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

If a question asks: “Freedom of speech is an absolute right for American. True or False”, the right answer is false. This argument had endured a long history in America and was ended by American Supreme Court in 1919, when the justices ruled that falsely “Shouting fire in a crowed theater” in order to cause panic was not to be protected by the First Amendment. Furthermore, the right of free speech is not protected for endangering others or obstructing another’s freedom of expression.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826, his presidency in 1801 – 1809) cherished the value of free speech so much because of Socrates’s (468 BC – 399 BC) death. He wrote to James Madison (1751 – 1836, his presidency in 1809 – 1817) that “A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.” And the United States ratified the first ten Amendments, called the Bill of Rights, to the Constitution in 1791.

Jefferson was also the main author of the Declaration of Independence. He wrote the Declaration in 1776, saying that “all men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Madison was called the Father of the Constitution in America. In the Constitution, written in 1787, the writ of Habeas corpus (a Latin phrase means “that you have the body”) is also considered as the most important human right. All people, whether citizen or not, living in the United States are guaranteed their rights by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. When one’s body is not owned by others, and one can pursues one’s own happiness, I don’t think that any body will let these great rights to be deprived of without a struggle.

When the first Sedition Act in America was passed in 1798, Vice President Thomas Jefferson worked with James Madison against this law. This is because under this law one could be jailed for making statements against the government or its members. The American people voted for Jefferson the next President in 1800. After President Jefferson inaugurated in 1801, he pardoned every convicted seditionist, and the Sedition Act was not renewed after its expiration date. Security and liberty, just like body and soul, live together. Linus van Pelt, a boy from the comic strip Peanuts, said “Security, like liberty, has to be won and re-won many times.”

No Chinese politician has taken the value of free speech like Jefferson did. Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976) once said that “One has no right to speak before one has done the investigation and research.” I have no clues whether Mao respected Socrates or not; for Socrates asked his questions plainly to obtain information, and to the answers with still another question, so gradually the truth is revealed. This is called the Socrates method. Asking questions is one kind of speech. People should have a right to question their government without having done any investigation and research; government should respond people’s concerns. In America, it is clear who the people are. In the Preamble of the Constitution, there is a simple but striking phrase called “We the people”, which means that the government is “of the people, by the people, for the people” as Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865, and his presidency in 1861 -1865) addressed in Gettysburg.

John Locke (1632 – 1704), his philosophy dominated the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, once commented on “rebellion”, said “for rebellion being an opposition, not to persons, but authority, which is founded only in the constitutions and laws of the government; those, whoever they be, who by force break through, and by force justify their violation of them, are truly and properly rebels.” This means the true rebel is the authority who, “acted contrary to their trust”, violates the people’s rights, therefore, 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.”

In today’s China, people are still not entitled “to [be] against every government on earth” as Jefferson said, not even peacefully. One would be put into jail for trying to exercise the freedom of speech. When the Chinese government put conscientious people into jail for opposition to the government, even peacefully, it claimed China is a country with law and it was just enforcing that law. I cannot name one country in this world that is without law, or one Dynasty in China’s history that was without law. The question is not about a country with or without law, but for whom the law protects, whether citizens, government, or even one special party. Some Chinese seemed to support such prosecution, and retort: “What about the country’s interest?” To them, the country’s interest is separated from the people’s interest, and they regard putting that so-called country’s interest first as patriotic. There is a novel, Les Miserables, written by Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885), which revealed that reckless law enforcement for a defective law could not keep peace on earth eventually.