a response to a dear friend who sent me the link below:

a response to a dear friend who sent me the link below:

http://view.news.qq.com/a/20100825/000041.htm (cut and paste because i don't want them to back track to my site)

if you don't read Chinese, it's about a man suing the local tax officials for their wrong doings. he lost because in China, you don't pick a fight against the government. so he wired himself with explosives and attempted to kidnap some foreign tourists demanding that he sees the president and demanding justice... well, long story short, he did not get his justice and died leaving behind a wife and child... sad really, but read on...

"i just read the story, you are right, it's depressing.

but it's a shame to say that i'm not surprised. there is a heavy tradition of China's feudalism past that values the authorities of their superiors more so than they value laws. it's the commoners who suffers and demands rule of law. But let's face it, "rule of law" is a new concept in China, and most Chinese, officials and commoners, still misunderstands the concept as "rule by law" - that the officials and government are entitled to their actions, right or wrong, simply because they are officials and the government and they get to make the laws. and people accept this because they don't know better... 5 thousand years of tradition and thinking is hard to change...

in any case, don't let this catch you down. China is changing, and the world is becoming a smaller place. soon, China will have the "rule of law" where no one and no government is above the law. but it's not going to happen overnight, it will take a generation of educated people like you to make sure the commoners understand that. They need to be empowered by the laws of the land and take their fate in their own hands. it's happened before, just look at the overthrow of the last emperor and the Communist revolution. if anything we can see from the last 60 years of progress is that people are slowly emerging from a slumber of repression and taking charge of their own lives... sure they are all focused on getting rich, but that's because of the necessity... but once people's lives are better, and they are more educated, they will begin to turn to a demand for their inherent rights... it took America about 200 years to get it and in some ways Americans still are struggling... so it will take China some more time...

Having learned the progress China has made in its Constitutional progress, i think soon or later, the Constitution will emerge as a true embodiment of the people... then, people will be aware of their rights as citizens and take responsibility of their own fate...

stay tough kiddo, stay focused and stay strong... China needs that strength more than ever! let time take care of the things you cannot control and you worry about the things within your grasp. oh, and enjoy life as you should and don't let things catch you down. you can either look down all your life or you can look up and walk, trip and fall once in a while is okay, but keep looking up!!! even on cloudy days like this you can catch a bird or two flying high...

jin"