Corruption at Peking University. No more, no less. (The case of Xia Yeliang)

It is hard to be a democrat in an authoritarian society: China's flagship of higher education, Peking University, has once again ministered to that reality by debunking yet another of its liberal voices: Xia Yeliang. 

Normally the removal of its internal critics goes unnoticed. Yet, Mr. Xia [a now former] economics professor who is a signatory of Charter 08 calling for democracy, decided to fight injustice and go public. [...]

This piece was first published by Asia Times on Aug 19, 2013.

World Community Agog Over China Resurrecting Confucianism

BEIJING - About 2,565 years ago a wise and aristocratic Kong Qiu came to the world, 551 years before a certain Jesus of Nazareth, nutcase and son of a penniless carpenter, was born to a virgin. The reason why we all live in the year 2014 of our Lord Christ today is because Jesus declared himself the son of the Jewish God, and the king of Jews on top of that, which got him nailed to a cross by an angry mob of Romans and Jews. To get back at them, he resurrected. The rest is advanced political sciences.

Others don’t equal Confucius to a religion at all. He never called himself son of God. Instead, he got himself an education and a real job. Since he was an academic, historians would compare him to Plato, the Greek philosopher. Either way, Confucius probably is to East Asia what Jesus Christ and Plato are to the West: the spiritual and the ideological master source. [...]

Read full article at China Daily on how Xi Jinping, China's president, aims at resurrecting Confucianism.

Jesus Christ, Confucius (Image credits: Jtonystl/Flickr; STATIC6/Flickr)

China, eyeing Japan, seeks WW2 focus for Xi during Germany visit...

COMMENTED: That was not supposed to happen in world history. No one but the mighty USA was supposed to PATRONIZE Germany. But now China comes along and pads Germany on her shoulders for good behavior. Japan and Germany are traditionally very respectful to each other. But I guess the Germans will snub the Japanese this time. China is just too powerful and beneficial right now. Berlin may have to knuckle under Beijing's propaganda campaign this time. It's a historical moment. --TP
GO TO ARTICLE AT REUTERS

Chinese migrants are taking corruption abroad

ONCE you lived in China for a bit longer, you start seeing truth, honesty, and trust in a very uncomfortable light. In order to get by and rising in the ranks, many Chinese lie, cheat, embezzle, and bribe whenever they can, and I don't mean that as an offence because it's the only way, I believe, to survive in China. Naturally, many continue their crooked ways when applying for going abroad.

READ MORE Asylum Fraud in Chinatown: Industry of Lies -by Kirk Semple, Joseph Goldstein, and Jeffrey E. Singer

There once were lectures on corruption at Peking University, with several case studies. To our surprise, Chinese scholars mostly thought nothing wrong with rent seeking, forgery and bribery. Students were oblivious to fraud, with over half of them in one class I witnessed at Tsinghua University admitting that they employ 'agencies' that ghostwrite their applications and personal statements for studying abroad. Zero feelings of guilt. Everyone is doing it, they say. It is the herd instinct, or, shall we say, the will to succeed in such an ultra-competitive culture at all costs.

READ MORE Chinese Top Universities Plagued With Corruption  -by Thorsten Pattberg

As may forms of corruption like the abuse of officialdom and the wining-dining-doing-favors culture are institutionalized, many young Chinese scholars think this is simply how the world works. Moreover, it confirms their daily experiences and they way they were brought up. At that was Peking University, mind you! In fact, many Chinese want to quit China for the West because they are tired of all the stress, cheating, callousness, exploitation and abuse in the Chinese society or, worse, they are afraid of getting caught in Xi Jinping's recent anti-corruption campaign.

READ MORE Author: In China, 'everyone is guilty of corruption' -by Zhang Lijia

We are going to witness hundreds of thousands of new corruption scandals in the coming years. [Here is today's latest]. It won't look pretty, but it needs to be done. This is a very rotten society, and the Chinese people deserve better!

Roderick MacFarquhar sees in Xi Jinping's sex trade clampdown an 'earthquake'

Roderick MacFarquhar
at the Stanford Center of Peking University,
October 2013

INTERESTING quotes from Roderick MacFarquhar (Harvard University) in this latest media bomb:
China's Crackdown On Sex Trade: An Anti-Corruption Campaign In Disguise? by Heng Shao

Roderick MacFarquhar, a professor at Harvard University, is quoted in the above article as saying that Confucianism is about virtuous women and "men un-corrupt!" It is quite a stretch of imagination that Xi Jinping's thought is guided by Confucius, and a very interesting statement in itself that, if it's true, may change 300 years of China Studies. That's because Confucianism, a 2500 years old tradition, is ANYTHING BUT un-corrupt, at least from a modern perspective. It's about hierarchies, patriarchy, nepotism, abuse of officialdom, and moral dictatorship, and not a few people (Lu Xun, say, and most European philosophers and world historians, and Japan who willfully abandoned Confucianism, for a starter) in fact have argued that Confucianism had been the main reason for China's cultural backwardness, no offense intended.

READ MORE Can China's new government end corruption?

The Confucian canon, often referred to as a code of conduct rather than a proper religion, is essentially an instruction manual for cult leaders and dictators on how to morally blackmail the people into obedience. Hence the absence of universal concepts of freedom, individualism, and human rights (although there's a lot in it about human responsibilities, like filial piety, obedience, dependence) in China. The vibrant sex trade might as well be an afterbirth or direct expression of the out-dated but  not defeated Confucian tradition, and Xi Jinping's Anti-Corruption Campaign might as well be another attempt of modernism to drive out out-dated customs that blemished China's image in the world. How so? Well, we know quite well that it was the Communist Party who battled the Confucian traditions of polygamy, concubinage, arranged marriages, and mistress culture (albeit not always successfully). In fact, it takes forever to establish the rule of law in China precisely because Confucianism thought that coercing people with a sense of obligation, shame and "face" works just fine, with the unenviable consequences that the people of China, in Hegel's words, "cherish the meanest opinion of themselves, and believe that they are born only to drag the car of Imperial Power."

READ MORE No quick fix for China's mistress culture

Professor MacFarquhar, a political analyst, must know all this well but he and/or the article may have intentionally linked corruption in China to Communism, rather than Confucianism. I don't know which one is the greater evil. But I have this notion that actions such as the crackdown on rampant prostitution and corruption are based on reason and common sense of modern statesmanship and should not be attributed to the recommendations of Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Confucius, or any other quack who lived in the 1st millennium BC. This is the 21st Century!

Professor MacFarquhar seems to suggest that the troubled Communist Party of China under Xi Jinping, instead of dashing into an unknown future (of liberal democracy and Westernization, perhaps?), may want to revive Confucianism in order to justify its authoritarian leadership. As said, Confucianism works pretty good at that: The Confucian ideal of a government run by supreme human beings -the junzi- with superior moral values, not dissimilar to Plato's Philosopher Kings, is possibly the greatest corruption of all.

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Pattberg: No Division of power will be granted

"The anti-corruption movement causes much more psychological stress, even anxiety or paranoia in all strata of Chinese society: Everyone knows someone who is corrupt, but few want to get involved in any of this. That’s because China is not only cracking down on corruption, it is simultaneously going after the activists, democrats, and dissidents."

--Pattberg, Thorsten (2013), Pattberg spoke with The Wall Street Journal about Xi Jinping's Anti-Corruption Campaign, The East-West Dichotomy, east-west-dichotomy.com

Pattberg in Wall Street Journal: Gewaltenteilung wird nicht gewährt

„Wir brauchen Transparenz. Wir brauchen eine Aufteilung der Macht", sagt Thorsten Pattberg, der als Wissenschaftler an der Peking-Universität zu Ethik geforscht hat. „Es sieht so aus, als ob sie die schwarzen Schafe bestrafen. Sie erneuern nicht das System." --The Wall Street Journal
Go to Wall Street Journal Germany: Chinas Kampf gegen Korruption macht Firmen zu schaffen
Mehr Einzelheiten zur Korruption in China: The East-West Dichotomy (Englisch).

They did it again (Big Think)

BEIJING - Xi Jinping's Anti-Corruption initiative resembles more and more Mao Zedong's Hundred Flowers campaign. People are encouraged to speak up and against abuses of state power and corruption, only to find themselves facing trial and ending up in prison for subversion of state power or disturbing public order. Looks like Xu Zhiyong joins the ranks of famous dissidents like Liu Xiaobo (Nobel Peace Prize laureate), Ai Weiwei (a world renowned artist), and Dalai Lama (His Holiness). Protest from the US and Europe as usual, but business with China must go on.

Read it at Big Think: They did it again

What exactly is “Socialism with Chinese characteristics?”

Everything the Party does is de-facto 'Socialism'

BEIJING - Outside observers who believe China to be a full-blown capitalist society are often confused by its government’s “socialist” rhetoric. That’s because China escapes most Western-defined categories, or at least it believes and desires to do so, hence the well-known appendix “with Chinese characteristics.” For simplification, we may as well conclude that everything the Communist Party does is de-facto socialism; and, in reverse, that the Party cannot do “not socialism.” [Read it at Big Think]

How Corruption in China Works

(c) The Japan Times, Saturday, April 6, 2013

TOKYO - Some people say that 'corruption' is in China what 'freedom' is in the West: the single most important principle that kits their respective societies together. The Chinese call the crucial art of interpersonal relations 'guanxi,' the 'do me a favor and I do one for you.' In a recent article to The Japan Times, your author argues that indeed EVERYONE in China has to be corrupt (from a Western standard point of view), simple because the typical Chinese public employee doesn't earn enough to get by their official "salaries" alone (average $500-$800). The new government around Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang now want to "curb corruption" and "clean the government," and they think one way to do it is to "double the average income." It's never too late.