Charter 08: Tyranny Creates The Demand For Democracy

An extraordinary document, Charter 08, was released yesterday.  It is  a sweeping call for liberal political change in China, signed by more than 300 prominent activists and intellectuals.  Its last two paragraphs capture the spirit of the document:

China, as a major nation of the world, as one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and as a member of the UN Council on Human Rights, should be contributing to peace for humankind and progress toward human rights. Unfortunately, we stand today as the only country among the major nations that remains mired in authoritarian politics. Our political system continues to produce human rights disasters and social crises, thereby not only constricting China’s own development but also limiting the progress of all of human civilization. This must change, truly it must. The democratization of Chinese politics can be put off no longer.

Accordingly, we dare to put civic spirit into practice by announcing Charter 08. We hope that our fellow citizens who feel a similar sense of crisis, responsibility, and mission, whether they are inside the government or not, and regardless of their social status, will set aside small differences to embrace the broad goals of this citizens’ movement. Together we can work for major changes in Chinese society and for the rapid establishment of a free, democratic, and constitutional country. We can bring to reality the goals and ideals that our people have incessantly been seeking for more than a hundred years, and can bring a brilliant new chapter to Chinese civilization.

Nationalists will no doubt argue that the signers of this document are somehow unpatriotic or have "sold out" to the West - a charge that has long been brought against Chinese reformers, going at least as far back as 1898.  Of course, that is not true.  This document, and its signers, are exemplars of the Mencian-Confucian tradition of Chinese politics: they are willing to stand up to power and call for progress toward Humanity in China and the world. 

Of course, the Legalist-Communist powers that be will do everything they can to squelch this movement and cling to office.  The arrests have already begun.  But the mere existence of the document itself demonstrates the ultimate folly of authoritarianism: tyranny always creates an internally-generated demand for democracy, a demand articulated by those who experience that tyranny first hand.  Democracy is not an externally imposed idea, it is the aspiration of many Chinese people looking for a life better than what they have experienced in their own lives in China. 

Read the whole charter...

UPDATE: The China Beat has background here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Wang Xizhe, co-author of the famous Li-Yi-Zhe poster (scroll down to section "legal and political rights") way back in 1974, and early supporter of the China Democratic Party in the 1990's, offers a leftist critique of Charter 08 (hat tip: Roland).  Although I disagree with him in certain ways, I think he makes a good point that political change in China will not come about in the way it did in the USSR or Easter Europe.

Comments

[isha]

"an internally-generated demand for democracy" or externally controlled, financed and promoted "color revolution" puppet show?

＂Democracy": is this the same coded word for the same corrupted system that the West trying to export, by cash if convenient, by force if necessary?

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http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/political-corruption-is-totally-epidemic-now/#more-587

Corruption is everywhere in our democratic system. It is epidemic. It is also part and parcel of how our system operates. It is sort of the ’shadow world’ of politics but this shadow world is allowed to flourish only because the nature of running for office and the temptations that lie there are so lucrative. Only when people go totally nuts and squeeze too many people or are in office too long, get nailed. But there are many ways of preventing this freebooter-style of corruption.
...
And it isn’t only the US. Many other ‘democracies’ are discovering that they do not control their elected leaders. These leaders all know that if they please the very rich and very powerful, they will be invited to give many speeches to fat cats and even fatter gnomes who won’t listen to a single word but happily use the occasion to hand over bribes
...
...
various team members are punished but the general game goes on.

This gives the illusion of ‘cleaning the stables’ yet all systems that need true correction continue to get worse. For example, we have people in power negotiating trade treaties. Unlike the ‘evil Chinese commies’, our trade negotiators are all traitors and liars or worse! Chinese commies come back with deals that all make China much stronger.

...
So here we are, we just had yet another election which featured an absolute flood of funny money funneled into political pockets! And very little has changed. AIPAC was not disbanded, it is stronger than ever and funnels more money than ever into the pockets of politicians and the news this week is, an advisor to Obama suggested that the US might cut funds to Israel. The flood of AIPAC money is for diverting many billions of dollars to the Jews in Israel as well as keeping the entire US diplomatic corps attached to Tel Aviv.

...

“The purpose of the current financial catastrophe was to infect the entire world financial system with toxic waste and other unregulated derivatives, also known as financial weapons of mass destruction, to bring it crashing down so that a single world financial system with a single medium of exchange could be set forth as the suggested solution and then crammed down our throats in yet another nauseating and tiresome iteration of the Hegelian Dialectic.
...
to implement a global, corporatist, fascist police state
of Orwellian feudality.”
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In the name of these fancy words such as "democracy", "human rights" ( ARE YOU WORRYING ABOUT THE HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY FOR THE Palestinian people?) , are they really the humane guys such as they are promoted to be? or they are actually trying to destory national sovereignty of ALL the NATIONS ( U.S. included ) in order to promote the "Orwellian Feudality" system that is really unfolding...

Isha

[isha]

" Democracy" ( plutocracy ?) at work... is it the one Mr. Liu Xiabo want China to emulate ? Thanks but no thanks.
----------------------------------------------------------------
How Rahm Emanuel Made Mega-Millions and Bought His Way to Power
(Remember: this Emanuel guy is the one who has Obama's ear before anyone else)

New details emerge of Emanuel's days as an investment banker.

By Ben Protess

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21427.htm

Since Rahm Emanuel was appointed the next White House chief of staff last month, ProPublica has been retracing his previous life as an investment banker, which earned him more than $18 million in less than three years.

...

what can I say ?

Isha

[gmoke]

I wonder if this will be as important as the Charter 77 movement in Czechoslovakia. There's a lot in Havel (_The Politics of the Impossible_) and the Hungarian George Konrad (_Anti-Politics_) about living in an authoritarian regime that might be useful for the Chinese. There is also a lot from them and others about how to deal with the world after the authoritarian regime goes away.

[Isha - You are My God!]

Isha so totally right. The Palestinians want to destroy the US, and they've got the economy and military prowess to prove it. The lessons of the Chinese experience under the graces of communism are the only way to prevent an Orwellian dystopia. That goes without saying.

Comrade Hu Jintao, meanwhile, affirms the country's desire to work with the international community for the promotion of human rights (http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=17138). But then he clarified that China must "base its human rights development on the basic situation of the country." So in other words, Comrade Hu Jintao is in control of the "human rights" of every Chinese soul. Because China, by arresting its dissidents yet again, has obviously endeared itself to the international community. And even if the international community wants to give prizes to these dissidents, then that does not matter, because China must look out for itself even as it claims an equal say in the international community. Yes, in other words China can have its cake and eat it too, because China is just that badass, and even if all heads of state are equal, Hu Jintao is more equal than the rest.

If any other countries want to cry foul, then they will offend China. This is non negotiable. Let all other countries who are offended also cry foul, so that we may all have our opinions heard, and have enlightening bilateral talks like the following:

China - You rascal Sarkozy, you have met with the DL! You have offended the Chinese people.
France - You rascal Hu, you have offended the French people by boycotting our products.
China - Well, you rascal Sarkozy, you threatened to boycott the Beijing Olympics, so you have offended Chinese people doubly.
France - Well, you know what? Maybe you have no right pushing me around like this. I say, your strong-man tactics at our very important EU meeting have once again offended the French people, doubly in fact.
China - Well, the idea of France offends the Chinese people times infinity.
France - Well, now the idea of China offends the French people infinity times one!

All hail Comrade Hu and his vision of a "harmonious society"! He has all the right answers!

[isha]

The 10 Commandments

THREE: 'You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.'

[Isha - You are not really my God, actually,,,,]

I don't know if you got the irony of that last post or not. Can't be too sure with you...

[isha]

Do not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name. (New Living Translation)

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To whoever you are: I don't see anything humorous or ironic in misusing G word, even though you are trying to teaching a lesson to a fool like me.

It doesn't matter, you are the one who are taking the risk and have to face the consequences, not from me.

Good luck!

[Kelly]

The fact is the Chinese people have their mouths tapled by the goverment, or more accurately, the CCP. Now it amazes me that those who live in the West, like Isha (I guess so because Isha can freely express her opinion), ignores and distorts the facts about the human rights disaster in China. See how rightous she is: you want human rights for Chinese people, what about Palestinians? What a logic! If there is no human rights in Palestine, the West should be quiet over the Chinese government's abuse; if there is curruption in the West, shut up criticizing the Chinese government.

Charpter 08 uses a peaceful language, reasonable argument to promote the human rights in China. In my opinion,it is too soft facing a currupted, brutal governmnet.

[isha]

Kelly:

First you bankrupted morally, then you bankrupted financially. What is the next...?

Let's face it, your moral superiority, the conceit, the pretension that you are morally positioned to slay dragons, which was delusion in the first place, has long, long, long gone. The Emperor (or the Empire) is naked.

Why not try to right your own wrongs for a change and let the poor Chinese to live their own lives and fight their own fight? What? Is that too much to propose to you? First, try to ask yourself; is it the evil CCP who created the derivative beast (1.5 hundred trillion dollar strong) that are currently bringing economic disaster to the entire world, U.S. working people included? Under what system that this Madoff guy and his gangs were allowed openly stealing from all over the world? How about other robbers on the Wall Street that are still running the show? How much damage they are doing to the whole world? How much money they paid for the politicians so their criminality was protected?

Criticizing the Chinese government? Yes, go to any Chinese domestic and international websites in Chinese language and you can see tons of criticizing. What we don't need is Empire's agents advocating color revolution for their own financial, political or “cultural" (superiority complex) gains...