From @UGA.CC.UGA.EDU:owner-china-nt@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Wed Jul 27 12:40:08 1994 Date: Wed, 27 Jul 1994 12:00:06 -0400 Reply-To: YANG Chang-Qing Sender: China-Net From: YANG Chang-Qing Subject: Chinese Community Forum (#9440) Comments: To: china-nt@uga.cc.uga.edu To: Multiple recipients of list CHINA-NT ==+==+==+== C h i n e s e C o m m u n i t y F o r u m ==+==+==+=== Wednesday, July 27, 1994 (Issue No. 9440) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Chinese Community Forum (CCF) is an e-journal published on China-Net. CCF is dedicated to the discussion on the issues related to the Chinese community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Editorial Board of CCF. Contributions to the discussions and suggestions of new topics are very much appreciated. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= # of Table of Contents Author | Lines ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== --*--Democracy and Chinese Circumstances--*-- 1. Universal Human Rights...............................Sam W. Nelson 27 2. Individual Rights and Human Rights......................Ming Cheng 60 3. The Medicine Man's Advice.................................Min Yang 64 4. Is It Necessary for Us to Understand CG? -- A Perspective Analysis of Herb's Article................Bo Peng 67 5. Some Arguments For and Against Oppressive Government in Poor Countries..............Shayne Weyker 256 --*--Letter to the Editor--*-- 6. Herb's Logic and CCP's Logic..........................A CCF Reader 36 7. Dignity or Money?........................................ProHua Wo 31 8. An Appendix...............................................Kan Liao 50 ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== -- From The Editor -- Following last week's CCF, we continue the discussion on democracy and Chinese Circumstances in this issue. In Mr. Ming Cheng' article, the author tries to distinguish "individual rights and human rights". He argues that the conflicts between individual rights "have been used abusively as an excuse to deprive the just rights of people, or even nations". Meanwhile, Min Yang refutes the notion that human rights and social progress, political reform and economic development are immiscible as the old Chinese Medicine Man's theory. Bo Peng in his article claims that "a government is the last thing in the whole world that needs understanding and comforting", since "it is a beast" with "tremendous power" and "tremendous potential for going rotten". Shayne Weyker tries to argue both sides of an oppressive government. The author was troubled by "the idea that there may be unavoidable trade-offs between political rights and economic rights". A "look from a few different directions" is conducted in this long, yet readable article, although nothing conclusive can be said. A Reader in her letter to us finds the logic of Herb's article to be similar to that of the CCP, and stresses the needs to make comparisons with the changing world, not only with one's own past. ProHua Wo in her article expresses her painful feeling that many of the Chinese intellectuals who have been exposed to the very idea of democracy and human rights still could not understand what the democracy fighters and human rights activists are fighting for. Do you understand, our dear readers? Kan Liao sends us an appendix to his article published last week on CCF (#9439). It should be read together with the original article. ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1. Universal Human Rights................................Sam W Nelson 27 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am writing to respond to the article by Mr. Newton Liu on the Chinese Community Forum (CCF #9435). As a citizen of the United States of America, but more importantly a member of humanity, I take exception with the categorization of those who sincerely strive for the protection of human rights as being motivated by selfish, nationalist interests. My earliest memory of a world event is the view of the Earth from the moon as a miniscule ball hanging precariously in space. The human race is too fragile to waste our precious time and energy putting bullets in the back of each others heads. As a Buddhist (a venerable Chinese tradition) and an American (of European ancestry somewhere in the past), I understand that violence always results in a negative cause. I feel sorry that the noble country of China has learned such horrid lessons from other nations: militant totalitarianism from the Japanese, communism and ideological fanaticism from Soviet Russia, colonialism from the Europeans, and soulless materialism from my own country. These are the forces I fear in the world. Why can we not study the enlightened traditions originating from our respective cultures for the improvement of mankind? I welcome your further rapport on this issue. Warm regards! [From: JTSWN@acad1.alaska.edu] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Individual Rights and Human Rights......................Ming Cheng 60 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This note concerns the definitions of Individual Rights and Human Rights, which are indeed two different concepts though closely related, overlap, and therefore, confused at many times. In defining democracy, no definition could be said as one being more authoritative than others because saying so would be against the ideal of democracy itself. Nevertheless the definition of the Human Rights such as the free speech is as familiar as, well, the arbitrary division of twenty-four hours into daytime and nighttime. However, if it is fair to say that there are daytime and nighttime in each single day, it is meaningful to us to set a clear, though simplistic, definition upon which any discussion or debate on Rights could be conducted. "Individual Rights", literaily speaking, means the rights of people as individuals. Its true meaning has a great deal to do with time, place, nation, and individual case from which we draw our lines. Individual Rights of a great many people may conflict with each other and have to be compromised or even deprived. A simple example is the right to smoke. Another one is that the people living in Sichuan's Sanxia area have to compromise their right of staying where they have lived for generations. On the other hand, this kind of conflicts have been used abusively to deprive the just rights of people, or even nations, unjustifiably by the government or the majority. Recently in a country, the majority has voted to deprive the right of a minority for using their own language and keeping their nationality. From a theoretical point of view, in fighting for protection of such just right of people, we can not resort to the concept of democracy which turns out to be a decision of procedure in practice, but only seek help from the enhancement of civilization of human being. The concept of Human Rights has been advanced therefrom, which uncompromisingly and universally sets the bottom line of the just rights of any people which have to be respected in any case. Human Rights, whose standard indicates the degrees of the human civilization, goes back to the basic rights of people as human being instead of individuals. Free speech, an overwhelming and fundamental component of Human Rights, is a typical example. It should not be taken away from any body in any case. So in a more civilized society, suspects have a better chance to defend themselves. If we accept the theory that the rights of free speech could be taken from some for protecting majority's interests, we will see no free speech at all. Therefore people never know whose interests are protected. That is the reason why we call these rights as Human Rights after people had used the words of Individual Rights for years until not long ago. Today, the concept of Human Rights is so successful since being put forward that even the violator would not like to bear the guilty but change the concept by stealing the sky and put up a shame sun. After the democracy has been vulgarized in China as we have seen, now it is the turn for the Human Rights. Even the donation for the flood area becomes a criterion of whether you respect the Human Rights or not. The question of "Do you care the Human Rights in China? How much money have you donated to the flood area?" seems very strong but indeed very vulgar. BTW, the question of "why do you not sign the petition letter for Liu Gang" is not much better also, but this has really gone beyond the scope of this note, we may discuss it at some other time. [From: mchn@chevron.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. The Medicine Man's Advice.................................Min Yang 64 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Medicine Man is wise and powerful. He revokes the departing soul, drives the evil spirits away, protects the tribal people and keeps them healthy. His advises must be heeded. Most of the time his advises appear trivial but often concern life and death. One of such advises from an ancient Chinese Medicine Man is: Thou Shalt Never Mix Toufu and Spinach in Cooking. Even with Ph.D., useless in many ways, I've never dared to challenge this advice, and can only guess that the chemical components of toufu and those of spinach, when mixed in cooking heat, might produce some deadly poison. Another such advice is: Thou Shalt Never Serve Bear's Palm and Fish on the Same Meal. According to St. Mencius, that is. He must have heard this from an unknown Medicine Man of his time. Not a Chinese soul has cast a single doubt onto this wisdom. Now the Medicine Man of our time is not only alive but his expertise has expanded. The latest advises he has handed out are: Thou Shalt Never Mix Human Rights and Social Progress in China; Thou Shalt Never Attempt Democracy under China's Circumstances; Thou Shalt Never Mix Political Reform with Economic Development; Thou Shalt Never ..... Each of his messages is crystal clear and his wisdom is undoubtable. If you want to take care of the people suffering in flood, drought, earthquakes and what have you, you've got to arrest people at will and beat them up and send them to Gulag. If you want the PLA to save the lives of the people in flood and drought, you've got to allow the soldiers to kill the students at Tiananmen Square first. If you want a good harvest you've got to sacrifice a couple of virgin boys and girls to pay tribute to the gods -- the Medicine Man performs this service for the greater good of the people, of course. If you want Fujian to remain open and prosperous, you've got to let the Fuzhou police at the Ma Wei Office arrest that poor young woman passing by on bicycles, beat her, rape her, kill her and throw her body in the river nearby; and then suppress the mob who gathered in front of the Police Office demanding justice. If you want to promote healthy exchanges across the Taiwan straits and unify China, you've got to declare the Qiandao Lake murder a mere accident and, when the cover-up fails, to pick up some suspects instantly, stage a hurried-up trial then shoot the suspects in no time. If you want a powerful, new China to stand up in the international community, you've got to have a Chairman Mao to liberate the people by besieging the cities and starving thousands of peasants to death together together with the Guomingdang bandits; and to label millions of innocent intellectuals as "Rightists" and de-humanize them, and to burn all the trees in the country to make charcoal to steel can be produced out of cooking wares, to launch miraculous Great Leap Forward "satellites", then ruthlessly repress those who dared to express their opinions about such madness.... In short, the Chinese must torture themselves to death or have someone torture them in order to have food on their table or to stand up in the world as a people. Thou Shalt Have No China without the CCP! Thou the Poor and the Underdeveloped Shalt Never Think of Human Rights! Thou Shalt Have No Family, No Self, No Rights, But the State and Party and Leader! Thou Shalt Sacrifice, Sacrifice, and Sacrifice! There's only one humble question: Are human rights and CCP rule, the Chinese stomach and an individual human face and backbone, really incompatible like fire and ice, or allegedly non-mixable just like toufu and spinach? [From: wuyuanpe@student.msu.edu] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Is It Necessary for Us to Understand CG? -- A Perspective Analysis of Herb's Article................Bo Peng 67 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- In my opinion, a government may be viewed from three different perspectives: 1. As an idealist with a social goal. 2. As a commoner who just tries to make a living. 3. As an insider. For an idealist, the goal is the ultimate test for everything the government does. Consequently, s/he usually ends up criticizing everything, since most every decision in politics is the result of compromising, which is true even in a non-democratic society like China. For a commoner, many things won't be of much concern. For the decisions that do concern him/her, s/he is likely to criticize also. After all, no decision is specifically tailored for him/her. An insider is either a former idealist forced to cope with the reality or a commoner who happens to have the job. S/he either automatically understands a decision through participation in decision making, or has to understand it, or at least has to pretend so -- just to keep the job if nothing else. Even though understanding does not necessarily mean agreement, an insider often agrees with a government decision, or always does in an oppressive regime. Often times it doesn't make much sense to argue whose conclusion is the "right one." All may have merits; it just depends on which perspective one chooses. In America, few except actual insiders and political scientists ever bother to assume the insider's perspective. They only worry about their own interests and making their concern heard. What to do with the voice is the government's business. "Government" is a four-letter word anyway. In his article, Herb Ho was apparently trying to understand the situation in China from the perspective of an insider in Chinese government (CG) while, I assume, he is not an actual insider. And, of course, he has the perfect right to choose his own perspective. When he tries to convince me with an insider's perspective, however, it becomes a problem for me. Furthermore, my impression is that many Chinese, especially among the intellectuals, have the tendency to assume such a perspective. Given the bamboo-curtain nature of Chinese politics, such a practice seems doomed to fail at the first place. Yet, for those who live in China, I could understand it: there is no way I could fight the government over the things I don't like, so I might as well try to convince myself that I understand it, just to keep my mind from going nuts. Unfortunately, it seems that many are identifying with the insiders for their own advancement, against their conscience and social well-being, by trying to convince others that they should/can not take any other view. In my opinion, a government is the last thing in the whole world that needs understanding and comforting from outsiders. It is a beast of such tremendous power, thus with such tremendous potential for going rotten (and they do), that a pat on the shoulder would just make it more spoiled. It needs constant checking and fanatic scrutiny; yet that is still not enough to guarantee its being a good kid. Incidentally, Herb used an analogy of his father beating him during his childhood. Is this too old, besides being totally irrelevant? [From: bo@saavik.Stanford.EDU] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Some Arguments For and Against Oppressive Government in Poor Countries..............Shayne Weyker 256 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recently a few people have been remaking the classic argument that repressive government is needed in poor countries to prevent anarchy. I don't find this argument to be particularly powerful; as a matter of fact, one of points which bothers me, a human rights supporter, the most is the idea that there may be unavoidable trade-offs between political rights and economic rights which result in a zero-sum game best captured in the expression "the amount of evil in the world is constant." In this article I want to take a look at the issue from a few other directions and see if anything conclusive can be said about it. Although most human rights supporters don't want to admit it, it is at least *theoretically possible* that oppression can bring about the most good for every member of the society, especially when future generations are considered as part of the society. Theoretically this is sound because, in order to ensure a brighter future for everyone, the current generation have to sacrifice their livelihood to invest in then well-being of the nation. But what they have to forego is not private cars or fancy restaurants; instead, it means that people in poor countries can't have what people in rich nations have long taken for granted, like owning one's own home, having one more child, diversifying the daily diet (i.e. having a variety of vegetables to go with rice/corn/wheat. Sorry, no meat yet), having a social safety net that will prevent starvation and homelessness, especially when one becomes unable to make a living on one's own and there isn't help available from relatives and friends, having a 40 hour or less job and medical care that can combat serious or even life-threatening illnesses, having public officials well paid enough so that bribery stops being an accepted substitute for the normal procedure. However, there are certain things people immediately desire and try to get as soon as they are financially capable rather than donating to the government to pave roads, build schools or install a telephone system. In an overcrowded country where hunger and disease constantly stare in everyone's face, the hope to move up the social ladder has become vanishingly small except for a few who belong to the middle-class/elites, it's going to be nearly impossible to get average folks to sacrifice their precious little which often separates survival from severe hardship or even peril. In fact, short of dictators with personality cults, no government can compel its desperate poor to go along with such sacrifices without threatening with imprisonment or death penalty. Personality cults, like those in old N. Korea and Romania, oppress the followers not with physical abuse but mental torture in the way of brain-washing. However, indiscriminate physical oppression is only a heartbeat away for anyone who dares undermine that process. Either way, in return for giving up the right to protest, the oppressed help advance the economy which they hope will allow future generations to be less oppressed by physical as well as mental hardship. What has been stated is of course only the theory, one which can be broken down and rewritten as follows: 1) First and foremost people desire a quality life or material comfort. 2) To get that *NECESSARILY* requires the current generation, despite their deep poverty, to invest in the future of the nation. 3) Any democracy worth the name can't handle this grand investment because citizens ignorant of long term needs for economic growth will vote out any government that tries to deprive them of their desired consumption goods. 4) The imposition of sacrifices on the people and the collection of resources by the repressive government with plans to invest in the future is thought to be *SUFFICIENT* for improving people's material comfort. Now we can see that statements 1 and 2 sound solid, though foreign aid and a longer timetable for achieving a higher standard of living can reduce what must be extracted from the masses. Statement 3 might or might not be true, this will be discussed later. However, in my opinion statement 4 is totally false. The ability of a repressive government in raising the living standards for its citizens is just as questionable as any democracy, only for different reasons, maybe. Here's the catch. In order to truly benefit the future generations, two big pitfalls must be avoided; otherwise, it will render all the sacrifices pointless, and death and misery suffered for nil. Meanwhile, those pitfalls can be avoided only if there is no repression of the people, and only if there is room to sound the alarm when serious corruption occurs or bad policy decisions are made. This precisely why having rights like free speech and free assembly bears great importance while economic development commands great attention from every facet of the society. PITFALL 1: THERE MAY BE NO ECONOMIC GROWTH. There are several ways that a government can oppress its people and extract economic surplus but still fail to get the desired economic growth: A) by investing in the wrong kinds of capital goods and infrastructure in an attempt to compete on the world market where they have no competitive advantage, such as Romania's failed shipbuilding industry or the economically non-productive military apparatus; B) by investing in environmentally damaging industries that the benefits don't cover the costs while human health, tourism, farms, water and air are harmed or damaged beyond repair; C) letting officials steal that has been extracted from its citizens to benefit their family and friends, in other words, by investing in ways which can only benefit small groups of the society; D) failing to get international cooperation, especially with more developed or dominant economies (For those who have paid attention since the early 70s, it is clear that the successes of the developing economies like China, Thailand, and Chile are the only exceptions of this rule. In most cases, people in poor nations are no better off than they were decades ago. And here is an aside: Of course, economists from developed countries often respond to this charge by pointing to unwise investment polices). Meanwhile, if enough people or groups of people, such as tribes, farmers, religious minorities, and so on, feel that the pain of sacrifice is being unevenly distributed, civil unrest or war is often in order. A civil war or any other social turmoil only wreaks destruction to infrastructure, upholds foreign investment and causes outflow of domestic wealth. Here, I must say that investing in the military, although mostly non-productive, can be useful if it can prevents a civil war, but the incremental reduction in the likelihood of war must be weighed against the incremental cost of failing to invest in productive goods rather than the military. Also, we cannot forget that a powerful military also increase the likelihood of the another pitfall: unjust but stable distributions of wealth. In every case, the more oppressive a government is, the less capable of avoiding pitfalls. In cases A, B and C the suppression of criticism, the prominent feature of all oppressive governments, means that environmental or economic oppositions will not be heard. While some criticism from outside, such as the UN's development agencies, and non-governmental organizations, are easily dismissed with arguments such as "they don't really understand our situation" or "they have a hidden agenda to keep our nation weak and poor". As regard to Case D, being oppressive provides no link to the wisdom and efficacy of rich nations' collective economic policy, what it DOES have is the likelihood that rich nations will put protectionist barriers up against their goods, for protectionist political coalition often join human rights coalitions in pushing for sanctions against rights abusers. The restrictions of GATT limit this practice to a certain extent, but not completely. Finally, if a civil war or anti-guerilla war breaks up, all the attendant rights abuses will draw not only votes for sanctions by those sympathetic to the rebel faction, it will also tend to pull votes from the human rights coalition in general. Civil war caused by uneven or excessive sacrifice is more likely where the government does not respect criticism. But that's not all. Some research into the origins of civil war has noted that it is a sudden increase in hope on the part of the people, not the level of their misery, that leads them to take the risk of uniting in arms against their government. Governments in poor nations have a balancing act to perform. If through reforms they get the masses too excited about the chances of short-term improvements in their living condition, people may revolt when the government decides to slow down. This is not to say that the government will be right in calling off the reforms. It's only because most governments look out for their officials' and power groups' well-being before anyone else's, they haste to bring the hammer down to prevent the threats to these privileged groups from reform from coming to reality. On the other hand, people can also get agitated enough to demand, under threat of revolt, more short-term improvement than would not be in everyone's interests. This state of affairs is just as undesirable as the government's bringing in the tanks to protect the privileges of a few. Justice costs money. Poor nations are often caught in a dilemma when confronting with the choice between investing in the future and having a social structure to provide enough so that the powerful rich don't back a coup and the dangerously poor masses don't revolt. It's situation like this that makes bigger foreign aid efforts by the rich nations morally required. The Chinese and others are right when they claim it's easier to espouse free speech and elections when your state is rich enough to be able to buy off and co-opt groups within society if things get really desperate. They would be right to say that it's easy to give fairer trials to ordinary criminals when one has 100 times as much money to spend on each case gathering evidence and putting in institutional safeguards to protect the defendant. PITFALL 2: ECONOMIC GROWTH OCCURS BUT ONLY A FEW BENEFIT. When this is the case of scenario, people are ripped off, and their sacrifice has been for nothing. Of course, scholars will tell you that economic growth is always unevenly distributed in free markets. The problem is that oppressive governments almost always identify with those of the social elites thus tend to ignore if not actually devastate the problem. While a less oppressive governments, on the other hand, will allow the protest and eventually the installation of legitimate and representatives of the people into government which will combine to force reforms both in social policy as well as the reduction of corruption, what a more oppressive government does is to have a powerful internal security system which will oppress any protest. Meanwhile, members of the security bureaucracy not only identify their fate with the rich but also want a piece of the pie the elites enjoy. Note that this pitfall is different from the concern over civil unrest caused the uneven distribution of wealth, which is a bad Oman even when it doesn't lead to violence. The way I've heard it, a lot of the folks who went to Tiananmen, particularly the non-students, did so because they could no longer tolerate the massive corruption of the officials and the injustice of how the officials have distributed social goods based on family connections and bribes. Democracy was the chosen means to get reform, but if they thought there was some other way which wouldn't have to confront the party leadership and still get the job done, they would have adopted that means instead. Democracy became their rallying cry only because what was going on in Eastern Europe and elsewhere at the time, but I am sure it was not just that. Now the anti-rights folks out there may think that I am implying that democracy isn't important. Actually democracy is important, for it seems to be able to accomplish more than any other form of government. These things are indeed of relevance in poor nations seeking to avoid the aforementioned pitfalls: 1) The empowerment of legitimate representatives of the people which is a cheaper and more humane (albeit somewhat less stable) way of preventing guerilla war or civil war than building a big security force. 2) An environment where public protests and criticism are both tolerated and taken heed of so that unwise and unfair policies can be reversed before violence strikes. 3) A way to remove corrupt officials who act only for small-group interests. 4) Sympathy from the human rights coalitions in rich nations which might help prevent legislation that erects trade barriers or sanctions against the poor but democratic nation. Now it seems that we have come in full circles. It is precisely the ability of the people to hold power over government which enables them to resist the government extracting sufficient surplus from them to invest in the future of their nation. The answer to this dilemma was once thought to lie in benign dictators. But the problem is that most dictators aren't benign and one corrupts and grabs power just the next guy. And they are by necessity more sensitive to the desires of the military and the rich than the hapless masses. Most dictators do not change even when their policies start to go bad, and may often refuse to seek and take policy advice from outside. I have no answers myself. It seems that critics of democracy together with repressive governments ought to show how other forms of rule can avoid the above pitfalls. And proponents of democracy and human rights ought to show how a poor but democratic nation can extract wealth from the population needed to invest in the future, keeping in mind the limits in going after the rich. Unable to solve this dilemma, I can only point out that poor nations suffer the following diseases: 1) There is more oppression than is needed to extract economic surplus for investment in the future. 2) There is less accountability for public officials than is needed to avoid pitfalls that besiege the nation and its people. For reasons like these I have no problem in asking or even coercing those governments to be LESS repressive to its citizens. Maybe when the day comes that there is a sudden improvement in the way those governments treat their people and the people still try to allocate too much wealth to short-term consumption, I could say "Enough for you! It's time to provide for your future generations." But as of now I don't think we're there yet. I wish people could present me with hard evidence and convince me otherwise. Here I present my views to both the pro and anti-human rights crowds, with the hope that they may take reference from my thoughts and revise their position somewhat. I would very much like to hear back from both sides, but especially the anti-rights crowd. [From: weyker@wam.umd.edu] ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 6. Herb's Logic and CCP's Logic..........................A CCF Reader 36 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- After reading Herb Ho's article on previous CCF, I found that this Herb's logic is exactly that of CCP's logic. CCP's logic is: China is different from any other country in the world, so, whatever CCP does in China is justified, since you can not compare it with other government any more. If there is progress, it is CCP's gift, if there is unsatisfaction, it is due to the poor conditions of China and Chinese. Even wrong doings of the government, more accurately, wrong doings of the leaders, were all due to the poor situation there, the leaders were forced to perform that way, there is no better way to do it. Don't believe it? You can't disapprove it at least, since there is no second China in the world. But CCP loves to compare now with the past, showing how much better now is, which indicates its success, without mentioning now is different from past too. How can you compare now with past without considering all the factors -- technology, world development, etc.? If CCP had not behaved the way it did, given the same other conditions, would China be better off now? Is there any better way for the current government to perform, that might lead to a better China in the future? Well, since there is no way to guarantee a positive answer, you'd better just forget all about it. Forty-five years ago, Chinese people made their choice: CCP. So, they have to stick with it, no matter what. Since CCP is in power, nobody else can demonstrate their ability to be a better government; since nobody can, you have to love CCP, and since you have to love CCP, nobody can try to form a different government, since nobody can try, CCP is in power .... What a wonderful circle! [From: xxxxx.xxxx@xxxxx.xxx] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Letter to Editor.........................................ProHua Wo 31 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Editor; I am writing to comment on CCF (Wed, July 20, 94, Issue #9439) titled "Human ^^ an article published on CCF ? Rights and Human Welfare" by Herb Ho. The title really should be "Dignity or Money". One can do two things for the Chinese people (better: both). One is that when they suffer, one contributes money to alleviate their suffering (e.g. in events like flooding etc). A better way is to move China to democracy where the wisdom of the whole society can be gathered to build a better social system that is more capable of, just an example, preparing and protecting the people in case of disasters like flooding (have you ever realized how much talent is being wasted and how much harm the wide-spread corruption is doing to the people in the non-democratic regime, Mr. Herb Ho). The purpose of human rights activities is to promote democracy. Unfortunately many CSS really do not understand the very meaning of human rights and democracy. Human rights activists and democracy-fighters sometimes are not applauded, supported, but rather scorned, laughed at - they pour out their hearts for the people of China!! I feel pains in my bones that even those of us who have exposed to a democratic environment are not able to understand what many people are fighting for. Wake up, Chinese! [From: weihua@mendel.Berkeley.EDU] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8. Letter to Editor..........................................Kan Liao 50 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- In your editorial of CCF #9439, you rightfully pointed out the difference of my definition of democracy to the standard one. The following is some appendix to my article: Ritual, democracy and government. I t is only what I personally believe. People who are interested should know why I have this kind difference. Democracy is from Greek. "Demos" meaning people and "kratos" meaning rule. So literally, "demos-kratos" is people rule or rule by people. Democracy in English as stated in Webster's is "rule by THE people". I have no intention to challenge the Webster, that's for sure. What is not sure is the meaning of "the people". Does it mean "the majority" or the abstract and conceptual sense of people which is the whole body of the people in the nation or each and everyone of us? Rule by the majority, though is pretty much the form practiced by every so called democratic government, is not really democracy in the theoretical sense. J.S. Mill explained this very clearly and eloquently. I am not going to "practice the ax at Luo Ban's doorstep". Is the rule by that abstract and conceptual whole body of the people in the nation attainable in today's mosaic world? If you read Karl Marx, I mean Karl Marx himself, not the second or third interpreters, you will find that communism is a very wonderful society. The problem is how to get there. I personally find the road that rule by the will of the whole people in the nation or rule by whatever THE people is as difficult as the road to communism. Well, rule by everybody is pretty much a nonsense in the real world. I was once very much enchanted by the very notion of democracy; that the nation is ruled by the will and power of all the people in the nation; the little ones are as powerful as the big ones. But that was before I realized that on the road to that kind of "democracy", we, the little ones, are going to suffer just as much as on the road to that other thing, maybe even more. I have already seen those people who claim to fight democracy for us, the little ones, discharging their 'humanly waste' on the head of the people even though they have not saddled on the heads of the people yet. I hope people know that Aristotle, Plato, Mill, Smith, Marx, Hegal, etc. are the far better source (and also much more difficult source) than the New York Time, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, and the U.S. Congress and president for democracy, if there is a real one beside the one on the paper. I hope this appendix to my article "Ritual, democracy and government" is helpful to those readers who took all the troubles to read my article at first place. At least, I hope it will be more useful than that appendix in our human body! [From: LIAOK@FCRFV1.NCIFCRF.GOV] +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++ + Executive Editor: Changqing Yang + + Associate Executive: Zhifeng Liu + + Executive Moderator: Weihe Guan + +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + For subscription: mail "SUB CHINA-NT Your-First-Name Your-Last-Name" + + to LISTSERV@UGA (bitnet) or listserv@uga.cc.uga.edu (internet) + + For unsubscription: mail "UNSUB CHINA-NT" to the above e-address + + For back issues of CCF: + + anonymous ftp to: cnd.org[132.249.229.100]: pub/community/CCF + + gopher to cnd.org: 2. English Menu --> 14. 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