Blind Activist Chen

Who is blind chinese activist Chen Guangchen?

Unlike peaceful civil rights advocates such as Martin Luther King, Chen's methods of protests are violent and destructive to public order and safety. 

On the more positive side, "People who know Chen say he is a Gandhi-esque figure and has a deep optimism that China will inevitably become a country ruled by law,” professor Susan L. Shirk, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of California in San Diego, told NBC News. “He is not a dissident, agitating for a change in government – he just wants China to enforce its own laws." 

There's much more than the mainstream media is willing to choose to portray Chen as a heroic champion of the poor and disabled. He is not a lone campaigner, but has many secret supporters and possibly foreign sponsors. How did Chen accomplish an incredible feat? One needs a well devised and orchestrated plan to escape house detention and make his way to the US embassy. 

Most of all Chen is against China's one-child policy. It is not difficult to associate with the fact that Chen has two children. Most Chinese who wish to have two or more children would move out of China and reside overseas. Without a successful and strict one-child policy, the world population would have more than two billion ethnic Chinese. That would sound scary to some people. 

Chen has tested the weakness of the security system and pushed the limits. China's provincial officials are rough in handling criminals and disobedient citizens. Police brutality (not unheard of in the US during the 1960s) is rampant in local jurisdictions. As a result the whole nation's name goes down with the misconduct of errant state and local officials. 

Chen does not have the credentials that would qualify as a skilled migrant to a western or developed country. He must acquire international fame (or notoriety) to get on board the ship. He has risen from obscurity to warrant getting the attention of the US Congressional Hearing.

Is Chen worth US risking ties with China. Washington has calibrated the act well by using Chen as a vehicle to embarrass China in front of the world, but at the same time playing the good guy, enough to avoid a diplomatic row, by reassuring its creditor and competitor that it meant well and treasured bilateral relations. The sensitive term of political asylum has been avoided so far. Nonetheless, US taking in Chen into embassy grounds is not in line with diplomatic decorum, international laws, amounting to an unfriendly act. 

The Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is critical of Hilary Clinton and Obama's handling of the Chen fiasco. MR reveals disrespect and ignorance of international law. He ought to reflect on sharing goodies with the poor and powerless of their own country and abide by the American constitution. before aggressively interfering in other country's affairs. 

Anyway, there is not much Chen could contribute by remaining in China. In his words, Chen hopes to seek medical treatment, rest and study in the US. NYU has offered Chen a place normally reserved for the high achievers. Hopefully, his aspirations are fulfilled and he learns more about the West (not just the idealist imsge he imagined from a distance). 

Update on con artist Ai Wei Wei, how about social conscience of the US -

Majority of Chinese people don't care or recognise western Chinese hero Ai Wei Wei who f* his motherland with no end of trouble by knowingly and defiantly breaking the laws. Ai earns his living by creating anarchy and upheavals.  


Perhaps the Chinese government need not pay too much attention to Ai Wei Wei. They don't deserve it. 


Ai Wei Wei's latest publicity stunt is unimpressive. Considering the  mainland and overseas Chinese population, tens of thousands of claimed online supporters and donors are a drop of water in the ocean. Despite the outcry, people get on with their daily lives.  


What a company name Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd!!!
Did any investigative journalist try to find out if this is a money-laundering set up that has evaded huge taxes? Social causes are noble. But politicised fund raising coming from one who has not been truthful and clean with his past claims should not be encouraged. 


No, any Chinese dissident's words must be trusted as the gospel truth. 


As expected, search engine results display quotes of Ai Wei Wei and his supporters. 


Ai Wei Wei was even thinking of keeping the donations instead of paying the back taxes and fines for fear that he won't be able to recover them from the authorities!  If you are a legal and tax expert, please explain the reasons given which do not make sense at all whether one pays it directly or not if they imagine the government to be despicable and deplorable.


Disorderly behaviour in public would be sufficient grounds to remove someone from harming himself and others, even in democratic FBI protected America.  This deranged hobo would be nothing without the backing of other dissidents and western financiers behind them. Foreign instigation should not be dismissed as it is a game that has been practised to the highest level. 


Politics aside.  Seriously, I am not an artist but I do appreciate good art. Anyone with an eye for art, please tell me honestly whether the works of self-centred Ai Wei Wei qualifies him as a great "artist". His negative "activism" has probably earned more than he deserves.  


The free wheeling western media (mainstream and tabloid alike) has chosen to sensationalise anti-Chinese heroes than getting their facts right. 


http://www.bearcanada.com/china/aiaiai.html


Would we show the same level of support for freedom of speech and compassion to Julian Assange of Wikileak fame and conscience representation?  


What about the Wall Street protestors? Does China or other authoritarian states play up or give moral and financial support to disrupt  capitalist / democratic governments? 


Some things have not changed, since my previous post on Ai Wei Wei.


http://chinainformzen.blogspot.com/2011/04/anxiety-about-ai-weiwei-who-is-he.html

Who is Chinese defector / dissident / blogger / spy novelist Yang Hengjun?

Before anyone throw their weight behind dissidents who dared to stand up against the mighty Chinese government, ask if you really know who is this latest enigma who disappeared and reappeared : Yang Hengjun 杨恒均.

http://baike.baidu.com/view/1005189.htm

After the big uproar over secret police detaining Yang, he has emerged and appeared to have taken ill and was hospitalised. His mobile ran out of power.  Many speculations have been thrown up, the most popular being the all powerful Chinese government bowing down and seeking compromise? More like journalists who built up a storm in the teacup trying to save face. Firstly, it is unlikely that the Chinese authorities would arrest and release a criminal so quickly. Don't they always plan and plot against the enemies? One possibility is some upstart in the police had overreacted and acted on the own accord. Yang's activities are indeed dubious and cause some concern. It is not suprising that it should come under scrutiny.

http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2011/03/30/mystery-deepens-as-missing-australian-writer-contacts-friends/

Yang Hengjun is no innocent retiree contented with writing spy novels. He has an axe to grind. He even has a website which churns out dozens of articles a week which are strident and harsh towards the Chinese government. In an interview conducted by danwei in 2008, Hengjun acknowledged that the Chinese authorities are less stringent and have not been as rigorous in censoring his blog articles.

http://www.danwei.org/blogs/cnbloggercon_2008_interview_se.php
http://yanghengjun.com/

Before becoming an Australian, Yang Hengjun worked for China's foreign affairs department.  He "retired"  from the Chinese Foreign Ministry and became a successful businessman.   Yang is by all counts a part of the Chinese elite, having received his education in Fudan university and later worked as a senior government official, coveted position hankered by millions of educated Chinese. Yang had also earned two higher degrees from Wales and University of Technology Sydney.

Should we believe the words of people in the likes of Yang wholesale without questioning any more than we distrust and condemn the CCP so willingingly? We know some former Chinese officials who live among us who have conducted businesses on the sideline and accumulated wealth.  The likely path was to empty their assets from China, a common figure of speech for planning an escape after one has dug enough gold and want to avoid being caught. Yet many of us in western countries and the free world admire these ex-Chinese officials who denounce their former governments even though they have much unexplained intrigues attached to their biodata. Those who are always inclined to point to the massive corruption of the Chinese bureaucracy and CCP are willing to forget Yang and the others' past. To give them the benefit of doubt, maybe Yang and others have reformed. But the bottomline is that these dissidents capitalising on their advantage of possessing a foreign passport have no right to claim moral high ground.
The backdrop of liberal democratic 'jasmine' revolutions in the Middle East would have caused many long reigning governments and regimes to take precautions. The jitters have rippled to the ordinary folks as well. Upheavals, no matter how one justifies it, would be disruptive in the short run.  It is certainly difficult to rationalise one happening in China now. More unacceptable is when these are supported by external parties.

Yang is utterly irresponsible when he called on Chinese citizens to go to Tiananmen if they wanted to show patriotism. Must change necessarily accompany bloodshed? The TAM incident was a grave mistake on the part of the intransigent students and the government crackdow. It is not unique in the history of developing country and developed nations in the past. Like some so-called victims Tiananmen many of us may know personally, stories were often exaggerated or even concocted to gain a passport to a better life overseas.  The true heroes stayed behind - some unfortunately sacrificed their lives, some were detained and many more are living a peaceful lives now. There are many channels Chinese citizens could express their views on social issues and complaints are taken seriously and do see the day of light.

When the populace and netizens rally behind the Chinese government, it is not considered democracy. It must be brainwashing based on the assumption that Chinese people have no minds or voices or their own at all.  Freedom of speech does not work both ways. Pro-western idealists, activists and liberal commentators who criticise the CCP and Chinese patriotism are beyond reproach.

Thousands of years ago when Chinese historians first documented significant events, there have been numerous cases of insiders who either failed in their duty as gatekeepers or collaborated with foreigners to invade China. Some are deemed traitors who worked solely for their personal interests and gains while others' motivations and goals are less clearly defined or determinable when they claimed to save the populace from tyrants. The Chinese civilisation has lasted many centuries, longer than the glorious Romans and Greek could claim credit for. Surely, they must have got many things right.