Why Chinese people are unwilling to be Chinese

I mentioned in my blog on 31 October that the result of a poll conducted by a Mainland Chinese website showed that the majority of Chinese people were unwilling to be Chinese again if they were to have a next life (and if they had a choice, I suppose). An article in the BBC website, called No Respite for China's human rights dissidents, gave some very good reasons:

'What does it mean to live in a country without law?

It means that the parents of the schoolchildren who died in the Sichuan earthquake will never get their day in court.

It means that people poisoned by China's filthy factories have never been able to sue.

That farmers robbed of their land by corrupted officials are left destitute.

And it means living in fear, which drives people to desperation.

In Chengdu, Sichuan, 47-year-old Tang Fuzhen tried to stop the local government from demolishing her home.

But the bulldozers and demolition crews arrived early one morning.

She could take no more, so she covered herself in petrol and set herself alight. She later died in hospital.

Eight of her family members, including her husband and son were then detained for "disrupting government work".'


The article also bursted the bubble of hope that human rights in China are improving. The correspondent said:

'It was thought the Olympics would make things better, prosperity would make things better, and leaving China to move at its own pace would make things better.

But human rights and legal reforms are moving backwards, not forward.

China is a country ruled by law, the government likes to claim. Except, it is not.

Wang Shengjun is the chief justice, but he has never been to law school.

However, he does have excellent contacts within the Communist Party.

And he has been a very loyal cadre, halting years of legal reform by telling China's judiciary to reject the concept of independent courts.

Instead they should consider Communist Party interests first, then the people's interests, and finally constitutional law.'