100 Blooming Flowers

15 February 2006



Former Red Chinese Party Bigwigs Slam Censorship

The People’s Republic of China is a communist dictatorship without a free press, meaningful elections or legal opposition. Its government tortures, imprisons without trial, and shoots at student protesters. China, however, can always surprise, and so it was yesterday. A group of former senior officials sent an open letter to the government complaining about the closure of a newspaper.

Bingdian is a rough transliteration of the title of the supplement to the China Youth Daily, and it means “freezing point,” according to people who speak Mandarin. The supplement has, apparently, been in hot water with the ChiComm leadership over the last several months for things it printed. The straw that broke the dragon’s back seems to have been the January 11, 2006 article by Yuan Weishi, a professor at Zhongshan University, which discussed how history is taught in Chinese universities.

According to the good professor, the Chinese textbooks never acknowledge the culpability of the Red regime. They always blame others. In this regard, Chinese textbooks are not unlike those of Japan, the US, Britain or France. He went on to say that the post-Revolutionary generations “were raised on wolf's milk,” in a culture of hate and violence. In a just world, he would be given a bonus for cranking out such a vivid description (reminds one of Hunter S. Thompson), but instead, Bingdian got shut down.

In most instances, that would be the end of the matter. However, a letter signed on February 2 and just released to the public yesterday said, “History demonstrates that only a totalitarian system needs news censorship, out of the delusion that it can keep the public locked in ignorance.” Moreover, “Depriving the public of freedom of expression so nobody dares speak out will sow the seeds of disaster for political transition.”

There are some “liberal” officials (those who didn’t want the People’s Liberation Army to shoot at the Tiananmen Square protestors) who signed the letter. However, more interesting than that, signatories also include Li Rui (Mao’s secretary and biographer); Hu Jiwei (an ex-editor-in-chief of the Communist Party’s official organ, the People’s Daily); and Zhu Houze (a former propaganda minister). In China, big things grow from seemingly small events. This letter might just be such a small incident.

The Danish flag appears here as a protest against the violence being done to the free press of that country and elsewhere by those offended by some cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, peace be unto him. A perceived insult is not an excuse for intimidation and violence, even in the name of the Creator. One cannot insult God, only small-minded men who falsely claim to speak for Him.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.


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