Part I – Seven Areas that Showcase China’s Moral Crisis
The world may know that China faces a moral crisis, but may not realize how serious the problem really is. Considering specific examples, from officials raping an innocent child and then declaring her a prostitute to doctors treating a beggar to a nice meal and then killing him to harvest and sell his organs, from Chinese netizens singing eulogies to bin Laden after the U.S. killed him to the series of frauds that China perpetrated on the public at the Beijing Olympics, the world may gain a deeper understanding of the problem. This article is the first in a series that analyzes the moral crisis in China, raising issues of great concern both for the nation itself and for the world. The factors to be addressed include not just how the crisis manifests, but also its historical development both within the context of ancient Chinese history and the unfolding of events after the Communist revolution. Part I is an exploration of seven areas that exemplify the serious nature of China’s Moral Crisis.
1. Officials Commit Rape
In mid November 2011, the village secretary and three other officials from Guo Town in Hanzhong City, Shanxi Province, took a 12-year-old school girl to a local hotel where they took turns raping her. The girl suffered massive hemorrhaging. The case was posted on the Internet on November 25 and later reported by Chinese Business View on November 30, immediately creating a public furor. [1]
To quiet the public outcry, Chinese Business View reported the next day that the police established that the case as “suspecting that the officials had sex with an underage prostitute.” According to the police, the 12-year-old girl was a prostitute and she “probably” accepted money; she had a pimp who was a ninth grader in her school; and her bleeding was just a result of her period. [2] This again created further public rage. [3]
In China, underage prostitution is differentiated from rape and punishment for the former is far less severe. A child under the age of 14 can be considered a prostitute in two circumstances: first, if she, as a “mature individual” capable of choice, voluntarily consents to have sex, and second, if the act is not consensual, but she has a pimp.
This legal interpretation may have started with Huang Xiongyao, Deputy Judge of the China Supreme Court between 2002 and 2008. Huang was found guilty of corruption in January 2010 and sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2010. He is reputed to have had a “special interest” in underage girls and to have supplied the interpretation of the law to best protect the perpetrators, who are generally government officials. Since passage of the underage prostitution law, similar cases have increased 20 times. Reports of child sexual abuse cases increased from 135 in the latter half of 1997 to 2,948 in 1998; 3,619 in 1999; and 3,081 in 2000, with the number increasing even more rapidly in the past few years. [4]
There are many other instances where the law enforcement system in China provided “protection” to the officials involved in rape. A young woman was pressured to drink a lot of wine and eventually got drunk at a lunch with some government officials in Xinyang City, Henan Province. One of the officials then raped her. She reported the incident to the police, but the police claimed there was “not enough evidence” and refused to record her report. It was only after she posted what had happened on the Internet and got public opinion to support her that the government promised to investigate. [5]
A school principle at the Ah City Middle School in the Bijie District of Guizhou Province forced a female teacher to drink wine with eight government officials. After she was drunk, one of the officials raped her. However, when she reported it to the police, the police claimed that “since (the official) used a condom, it did not count as rape” and suggested she keep it quiet. [6]
A well-known example is that of Deng Yujiao, a 21-year-old female pedicurist who worked at a hotel located in Badong County, Hubei Province. When Deng Dagui, a government official, was trying to overpower and rape her, she tried to stop him by stabbing him, causing his death. The police alleged that she had a mental problem. With the overwhelming support of the public, she was able to escape sentencing. [7]
On October 29, 2010, Lin Jiaxiang, the Party Secretary of the Shenzhen City Maritime Safety Administration in Guangdong Province, tried to drag an 11-year-old girl into the men’s room to molest her, but she escaped. When the girl’s parents confronted him, he acknowledged his attempt without shame, saying, “I did it. So what? How much money do you want? I will give you money.” When people expressed their disgust with him, Lin shouted, “Do you know who I am? I am sent by the Ministry of Transportation. I am at the same level as your mayor. … You people are nothing! Go ahead and fight me! See how I will crush you.” [8]
2. Hatred Prevails over Compassion
Hatred is pervasive in China nowadays. The poor hate the rich. The underprivileged hate the privileged. Citizens hate government officials. The public hates U.S. hegemony (as the result of government’s continuous anti-U.S. propaganda campaign). There is little mercy, not to mention compassion, toward the “enemy,” since people’s hearts are filled with hatred.
Yang Jia, a Beijing resident, killed six policemen and injured five with a knife in Shanghai on July 1, 2008. He was sentenced to death and executed on November 26, 2008. The public praised him as “大侠 (a big hero).” People wore T-shirts with his face and his words “If you don’t give me an explanation, I will give you an explanation” outside the courthouse during his trial. A protest flag that read “刀客不朽 (The knifeman shall live forever in our hearts)” was also displayed. [9] People created musical tributes to him. A movie on MTV, called “怒放的生命” (“Life in Full Blossom,” which can also be literally translated as “Life in Angry Blossom”), was made about him. The final scene of that movie was a stele with four Chinese characters that read “Last Forever.” Among numerous postings praising him, only one comment raised a little voice, “But he did kill innocent policemen after all…” [10]
A female official in Wencheng County, Zhejian Province, got drunk and was lying along the roadside. Three beggars passed by and raped her. When this was reported on the Internet, surprisingly, thousands of user comments supported the three beggars. Only one posting was against it. Boxun.com reported, “Some high officials sadly said that one would never know how much folks hated officials if they had not read these comments. People have lost their rationality and largely support the beggars’ act of rape! China is in chaos!” [11]
After the U.S. killed bin Laden on May 1, 2011, many Chinese netizens expressed their sorrow for bin Laden and praised him as the “anti-U.S.” hero, despite the fact that the terrorist actions that he led had killed thousands of innocent people. 480,000 Chinese people participated in a survey conducted by Phoenix Online about bin Laden’s death. The first question was “How do you view the U.S. killing of bin Laden?” 60% of the people voted for “Sad, an ‘anti-U.S. fighter’ is down,” while only 18% voted for “Happy, the head of the terrorists was finally killed.” [12]
When President Obama hosted Chinese President Hu Jintao at the White House in January, Lang Lang was invited to perform. He played the music of the song “My Motherland” from a 1956 Chinese movie, “Battle on Shanggangling Mountain,” about the heroic people’s army beating the “jackals” (meaning U.S. troops) during the Korean War. Chinese netizens praised Lang Lang for slapping the U.S. in the face without their being aware of the slight. [13] Lang Lang denied any ill intention in selecting the song. However, even if this 28-year-old was naïve about how inappropriate a choice he had made, what about Hu’s assistants? What about the veteran Chinese diplomats who negotiated the very details of the reception with their U.S. counterparts prior to the event?
3. Making Money at the Cost of Other People’s Lives
The cover story of Caijing magazine’s August 31, 2009, issue was “Where Did the Organ Come from?” It reported an organ harvesting murder case in Guizhou Province. A 35-year-old homeless person, known as “Lao Da,” one day suddenly became handsome – with a clean haircut and shave (a later suggestion was that he most likely was taken to hospital to give a blood sample). A few days later, his body was found in the water at the local dam and all his organs had been removed. The homeless and the beggars in the area fled after hearing the news. Three doctors from the Third Hospital Affiliated with Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, were found to be involved in this organ harvesting case. [14]
Chinese have excellent cooking skills and enjoy eating. However, these days, food safety scandals have shaken the public’s confidence in eating. People question how someone, with full awareness, can dare to create poisonous food and wonder whether they even have a moral bottom line.
The 2008 Chinese milk scandal is just one example of food safety problems in China. In late 2008, milk and the formula for infants, produced by the Sanlu Group in Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province, were found to contain melamine. Producers added the chemical to poor quality products so that milk would appear to have a higher protein content. By November 2008, China reported an estimated 300,000 victims, with six infants dying from kidney stones and other kidney damage, and a further 860 babies hospitalized. [15] Tian Wenhua, the chairman of Sanlu Group was sentenced to life imprisonment. Government officials announced that Sanlu had been adding melamine to its milk since 2005. [16] In March, 2011, CCTV’s “Weekly Quality Report” found that 70% of the people surveyed said that, because of their concern for food safety, they would no longer choose to buy domestic milk. [17]
On August 17, 2010, the State Food and Drug Administration issued a list of 33 fake medicines, thus highlighting the problem of fake medicine in China. [18] The frequent discovery of fake medicine forced the Chinese police to start a campaign in 29 provinces on November 17, 2011, to “strike hard against counterfeit medicine.” According to a Nanfang Weekend report, “the police have confiscated over 100 types of fake medication, ranging from prescription drugs to health medicine, from oral tablets to injections, from Chinese medicine to Western medicine, and from domestic medicine to imported medicine.” Counterfeit medicine producers were willing to pay three thousand yuan (U.S. $460) for an imported cancer medicine container. One fake medicine producer still had a smidgen of conscience, “I told the manufacturer to make sure nobody would die after taking the fake medicine.” [19]
More recently, we have seen high speed trains collide, [20] construction so shoddy that roads have often caved in, [21, 22. 23], and schools that collapsed in an earthquake killing children, while government buildings remained intact. [24]
By July 16, 2007, the number of lethal consumer products and the instances of faulty workmanship and unsafe working conditions had become so notorious that U.S. Congressman Frank Wolf actually listed them out loud on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives: “Next time you make a purchase, and you see the words ‘Made in China,’ think of the poisoned toothpaste, the contaminated food, the polluted waterways and airspace, the exploding tires, malfunctioning fireworks, the human rights abuses, and the intimidation of religious leaders. Remember that China poses a threat not only to its own citizens, but to the entire world. … The United States government and American consumers must be vigilant about protecting the values that we hold dear.” [25]
4. No More Good Samaritans
Another recent example of China’s moral crisis occurred when, on October 13, 2011, two-year-old Yueyue wandered into the street near her parents shop in Foshen, where a van ran over her. The driver paused for a moment, presumably realizing he had just hit a toddler. Then he drove on, crushing her again under his rear wheel. Not only did 18 people walk by her and do nothing, but yet another truck hit her. A nearby surveillance camera shot the event and posted it on the Internet. Millions of Internet users expressed shock when they saw the video. Lijia Zhang wrote an article for the Guardian asking, “How can I be proud of my China if we are a nation of 1.4bn cold hearts?” Little Yueyue died on Friday, October 21, 2011. [26, 27, 28, 29]
On September 3, 2011, Chutian Metropolis Daily reported that an 88-year-old man fell near a vegetable market just 100 meters from his home in Wuhan City, Hubei Province. Onlookers surrounded him and watched him die as he suffocated from a nosebleed. His wife cried, “If someone had helped him by turning him over and letting the blood flow out of his nose, he might not have died.” [30]
On November 9, a beam fell from a construction site in Linyi in Shandong Province and hit a five-year-old boy. The mother begged motorists and bystanders to help take him to the hospital, but all refused, including the chengguan, the low-level municipal police. An ambulance arrived, but it was too late. The boy died on the way to the hospital. [31]
On October 13, 2011, a woman wanted to commit suicide, so she jumped into West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. People on the bank took photographs, but no one tried to rescue her. Only a Uruguayan woman, Maria Fernanda, jumped into the lake and pulled her out of the water. Maria said at that time she did not think twice before jumping into the lake, but she was shocked and angry at the onlookers. She said they may not have been able to save the woman, but they should not have taken pictures indifferently. [32]
Some have explained the rationale for not stopping to help others by saying, “Without evidence to prove my innocence, I could be charged with a crime.” In a famous case in 2006, when a woman fell down at a bus stop in Nanjing and broke her leg, a good Samaritan, Peng Yu, helped her get to the hospital. She later accused him of causing her fall. The judge decided he must have been guilty or he would not have gone to such trouble and ordered him to pay 40 percent of the woman’s medical costs, or 45,000 yuan. [33]
This, however, is only a partial explanation. One Internet blogger, Reissent1987, asked, “Where did conscience go … What has happened to the Chinese people?” Another writer further suggested, “It is clear however, that as the Chinese people change their object of worship from Mao to the market, they are creating a moral vacuum.” [34]
5. Lying without Shame
On October 12, 2007, Shaanxi Province Forestry Bureau announced that they had found a South China tiger in Shaanxi. The evidence consisted of pictures that a villager, Zhou Zhenglong, took of the tiger in Zhenping County, Shaanxi, on October 3. The Forestry Bureau requested funding to protect the about-to-be-extinct animal, and the local Zhenping government set up a large billboard on the street that read, “Visit nature, hear the tiger, and eat Zhenping smoked pork.” However, the public overwhelmingly challenged the authenticity of the pictures. Despite indisputable evidence that the pictures were fake, even including the identification of the tiger painting that the picture was taken from, the forestry officials stayed firm in supporting Zhou. Eventually Zhou Zhenglong was taken to court and sentenced to three and a half years in prison for fraud and carrying an illegal weapon. The netizens created an idiom “正龙拍虎” (“Zhenglong photographed a tiger”), referring to “someone or some group that perpetrates fraud out of their own self-interest and refuses to admit their wrongdoing even after the fabrication is revealed.” [35]
The Hanxin fraud is an example of academic corruption. In 2003, Chen Jin, an engineer at Motorola, hired people to wipe out the trademark on Freescale Semiconductor’s MOTO-free scale 56800 chip and added his “mark,” thus creating the “Hanxin-1” chip. Several top Chinese scholars gave a high five to the chip. The Shanghai government claimed it to be the first time that the Chinese owned the entire intellectual property rights to a 0.18 micrometer DSP chip. Chen received several patents from China and became the Dean of the Microelectronics School at Shanghai Jiaotong University, a Ph.D. supervisor, and a “Cheung Kong Scholar” (a program China created to attract scholars from overseas to return to China). Over the years, Chen Jin applied for several dozen research projects and received over 100 million yuan (U.S. $15.4 million) in research funding from the government. He also developed “Hanxin-2,” “Hanxin-3,” “Hanxin-4,” and “Hanxin-5.” It was not until 2006 that the whole scam was revealed. [36, 37]
Not only do individuals tell lies, but the government also uses the state machinery to perpetrate lies.
The first case of SARS in China is purported to have occurred in Guangdong Province in November 2002. However, China did not report any instances of SARS to the World Health Organization (WHO) until February 2003. Even after that, China drastically understated the number of cases.
On April 4, 2003, Dr. Jiang Yanyong, a retired surgeon and president of the No. 301 Military Hospital in Beijing, who held a rank in the PLA equivalent to Major General, emailed an 800-word letter to CCTV and Phoenix TV (in Hong Kong), reporting the outbreak. Neither media reported the problem. However, when Western news media got wind of it, the Wall Street Journal and Time magazine reached Dr. Jiang for an interview and immediately published the news that first exposed the Chinese government’s cover-up of the SARS epidemic. On June 2, 2004, Jiang’s family reported that Jiang Zemin had placed Dr. Jiang (no relation) and his wife in military custody for “violating military discipline.” Dr. Jiang was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award “for his brave stand for truth in China.” It is the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize. He was placed under house arrest after being released, so he could not even attend his own award ceremony. [38]
The Beijing Olympic Games was designed to be an extravagant display of China’s power. This extravaganza included several frauds: In the opening ceremony, television coverage of the fireworks show, which displayed the 29 firework “footprints” outside the stadium, was simulated by computer animation; [39] Lin Miaoke, who was attractive, was chosen to lip-synch “Ode to the Motherland” over Yang Peiyi, the actual vocalist, who was not so attractive; [40] and people questioned whether Lang Lang actually played the grand piano, since he somehow forgot to open the cover. [41] That is not the end of the fabrications. Though the government claimed that the Olympic Games were sold out, many empty seats could be seen on TV. The government had to organize cheerleaders into teams in yellow shirts to fill the seats. [42] The gold medal winning Chinese women’s gymnastics team was also under scrutiny: three female gymnasts were questioned about being under the age of 16 (the minimum age required to compete in the gymnastics). Although their passports said they were 16, their baby faces, their Chinese online records, and several newspaper articles all said that they were underage. [43]
It is often reported that China cooks its books and that “China has predicated its very claim of being the healthiest large economy in the world on faulty statistics,” [44] but how unrealistic are the numbers? According to WikiLeaks, when Li Keqiang, the anticipated Premier after Wen Jiabao, was the Party Secretary of Liaoning Province, he confided in U.S. Ambassador to China Clark Randt that he didn’t trust China’s official numbers. According to the leaked cable, Li “focused on just three data points to evaluate Liaoning’s economy: electricity consumption, rail cargo volume, and bank lending. ‘By looking at these three figures, Li said he could measure with relative accuracy the speed of economic growth. All other figures, especially GDP statistics, are “for reference only,” he said smiling.’ the leaked cable added.” [45]
On July 29, 2009, after the global financial crisis, the State Statistics Bureau of China reported that the average annual salary for people working in cities was 14,600 yuan (U.S. $2,250), an increase of 12.9% from the previous year. Netizens joked that they got “being increased on salaries” (though the government statistics claimed they got “salary increases,” they never really got them). One internet posting said, “According to state data, the profits at state-owned enterprises slipped 27%, the profits at industrial enterprises decreased 20%, and only 40% of publicly-traded companies were making money. That means that profits dropped at most companies, but our bosses increased our salaries. Not bad!” [46]
At the time that the violent persecution of Falun Gong was launched in July 1999, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also carried on a far-reaching campaign of disinformation to demonize Falun Gong in order to justify the persecution and put pressure on Falun Gong. To incite hatred of Falun Gong, on January 23, 2001, the regime staged a “self-immolation” of five people in Tiananmen Square.
In the weeks following the event, a wealth of evidence was uncovered to indicate that the regime had staged the entire incident. A Washington Post article found that two of the “self-immolators” never practiced Falun Gong; one “self-immolator” died from a sharp blow to the head delivered, right before the incident, by a man wearing an army overcoat; every “self-immolator’s” hair, skin, and vocal cords remained intact; the police, standing nearby, extinguished the flames within 1 to 2 minutes, using about 25 pieces of fire fighting equipment they had on hand that day, when they never have such equipment at Tiananmen. Also, the Falun Gong practice explicitly prohibits violence, killing, and suicide. Actually Falun Gong identified 54 discrepancies to indicate the incident was staged. [47, 48. 49]
6. Business Ethics
Accounting fraud in Chinese companies exploded in 2011. It started in January with China Forestry Holdings after its auditor, KPMG, informed the board of directors of possible irregularities in its accounting books. The situation then snowballed. In early June the SEC warned investors against investing with Chinese firms that listed via “reverse mergers.” Over 20 U.S. listed Chinese companies were de-listed or halted in 2011 and the auditors have resigned from many others. [50] The Economist even asked, “The sheer number of allegations raises an obvious question: If concerns are rife in places where there is close scrutiny, how bad might things be in Hong Kong, the largest market for overseas Chinese listings, and on the mainland?” [51]
Tang Jun, once respected as the “King Employee” and the “Number One Professional Manager in China,” was the head of Microsoft’s Great China region. In 2004, he retired as the honorary president of Microsoft China Co. Ltd. He has published several books. The most famous was My Success Can Be Duplicated. [52] In 2007, Tang was challenged for false claims on his resume and in his book that he obtained a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology – Tang later admitted that he graduated from Pacific Western University in Hawaii, which was later shut down; he claimed that he owned several patents in the U.S., but no patent in the U.S. was registered under his name; he ran the “Number One U.S. Immigration Attorney Office,” where he was the only attorney. He said he was “number one” in the immigration business in Los Angeles five months after he opened his office as an attorney. When the question arose as to how, without any formal legal education, a person could handle immigration cases so successfully, Tang’s credibility collapsed. [53]
Nanfang Daily reported that 60% of resumes in China are fraudulent. “These frauds include ‘twisting’ or hiding the facts and ‘fabrications’ that are purposely created.” [54]
New terms that have been created in the past ten or fifteen years are indicative of the deterioration of business ethics:
宰熟 (pronounced as “Zai Shu”): Cheat an acquaintance (Since there are so many con artists, Chinese are cautious of strangers, so it has become common practice to cheat friends and relatives.)
托 (pronounced as “Tuo”): The con artist’s associate pretends not to know the con artist and uses his third-party status to help the con artist lure victims.
潜规则 (pronounced as “Qian Gui Ze”): The hidden rules. Some examples of the many hidden rules in China: An employee needs to bribe (with a lot of money) his boss to get a promotion, a patient needs to bribe the surgeon before an operation so he will do a good job, actresses must sleep with the movie director or producer to get the role, and Party members must vote for the person that the Party secretary wants to be elected.
7. Government Crimes
A. Organ Harvesting
Substantial credible evidence as well as anecdotal evidence exits to suggest that organ harvesting is widespread in China and, in certain instances, directed at specific groups the Chinese Communist Party finds undesirable.
As early as 1998, a Sunday Telegraph article by Olga Craig discussed a court case that occurred in 1998 regarding the illegal sale of human organs in China. In another instance, a Mr. Wang told how he “could sell 50 prisoners on death row over the next year. His price list was $25,000 for livers, $20,000 for kidneys, and corneas and pancreases $5,000 a pair.” [55]
After Wu Guoqi sought asylum in the United States, The Washington Post wrote extensively about his organ transplant experience, which included over 100 executed prisoners, one of whom had not yet died at the time his organs were taken. [56]
In 2006, David Kilgour, a Member of Parliament, and Canada’s former Secretary of State for Asia Pacific, along with David Matas, Canada’s delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and Director of numerous Human Rights organizations, together published their report connecting organ harvesting specifically with Falun Gong practitioners.
As a result of their research, they concluded: “Based on our further research, we are reinforced in our original conclusion that the allegations are true. We believe that there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.
“We have concluded that the government of China and its agencies … since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including kidneys, livers, corneas and hearts, were seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries.” [57]
Just recently, Ethan Gutmann wrote a piece for the Weekly Standard on the use of organ harvesting in the systematic elimination of China’s religious and political prisoners. In this instance, Gutmann spent two years interviewing Uighur witnesses. Piecing their testimony together, Gutmann found widespread harvesting of Uighur organs. “And when it comes to the first organ harvesting of political prisoners, Xinjiang was ground zero.” [58]
B. Land Grabbing
Willie Lam, a history professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who writes for the Jamestown Foundation (www.jamestown.org), a leading foreign-policy think tank in Washington, D.C., pointed out that local officials are in cahoots with developers, with some 45% of local revenue coming from the sale of people’s land. As a result of borrowing money to help finance their projects, the provinces face an enormous debt; nor do they have any option other than land sales to service that debt, which, at present, amounts to between 12 and 13 trillion yuan (U.S. $2 trillion). Lam points out that there are approximately 120,000 mass protests annually in China of which 70% are caused by these “land grabs.” [59, 60] The recent protest in Wukan Village, Guangdong Province, was a direct result of government land grabs. [61] C. The Communist Party Must Always Be Great, Glorious, and Correct
Recently, and particularly since the Arab Spring, the Communist Party has worried about losing control. As it zealously insures “social stability,” the Party often arrests or “disappears” protestors. Some of these individuals have achieved fame internationally for their attempts to seek justice.
Gao Zhisheng – Gao represented dissidents, religious believers, and those with grievances against officials. In the past several years, he was known for representing Falun Gong practitioners. He wrote an open letter asking Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao to stop the ongoing torture of Falun Gong practitioners. As a result, the CCP started persecuting him. On August 15, 2006, he “disappeared” for the first time. He has “disappeared” several times since. Gao described his torture while in captivity, including beatings, electric prods, and even toothpicks to his genitals.
Gao’s wife and children managed to escape to the United States, where they were granted asylum. Gao himself has not been seen since March 2010. [62]
Ai Weiwei – Ai Weiwei is one of the best known artists in China. He collaborated on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics. His works have been featured in museums all around the world, and he has received numerous awards. Ai supported an investigation into the schools collapsing in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. He started compiling a list of students who had been killed and accumulated 5,385 names, which he posted on his blog. This led to the government’s demolishing his Shanghai studio and his arrest on April 3, 2011. Due to international pressure, he was released on June 22, 2011, but the Beijing Local Taxation Bureau demanded a total of over 12 million yuan (US $1.85 million) from his company, Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd, in unpaid taxes and fines. [63]
Liu Xiaobo – Liu Xiaobo called for political reform in China. He served as President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, an organization funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, which, in turn, is funded by the U.S. Congress. Liu was arrested a number of times: on June 6, 1989, for his participation at Tiananmen Square; on May 18, 1995, for launching a petition; and on October 8, 1996, for co-authoring the October Tenth Declaration, for which he served three years in a forced labor camp. On December 8, 2008, the Chinese regime arrested him for his participation in writing and for signing the Charter 08 manifesto that called for more freedom of expression, human rights, democratic elections, privatizing state enterprises, and land and economic reform. He was tried and sentenced to 11 years in prison. In 2010, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. [64, 65]
Chen Guangcheng – Chen Guangcheng, although blind since childhood, studied Chinese medicine from 1998 to 2001 and managed to audit law classes. In 2005, Chen exposed some of the illegal measures the local authorities used to enforce China’s one-child policy. The authorities have forced thousands of women to undergo sterilization or abortions, even in late-term pregnancies. Chen filed a class-action lawsuit on women’s behalf against Linyi officials, for which, as a result, an investigation resulted in several officials being detained. The Linyi authorities arrested Chen in September 2005. He served four years and three months in prison. After his release on September 9, 2010, he and his wife were kept under house arrest in their home in Dongshigu Village outside of Linyi, where they suffered severe beatings and round-the-clock monitoring. Their young daughter was prevented from attending school. [66]
Gao Rongrong – On May 7, 2004, when Gao Rongrong still refused to renounce Falun Gong, guards at Longshan Forced Labor Camp, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province used electric batons to shock her face for six or seven hours straight, burning her face to a crisp. She managed to escape and sent a picture of her charbroiled face to overseas websites. When the Communist regime found out, they put out an all points bulletin for her capture, caught her, and tortured her to death. She died on June 16, 2005, but her picture has become a symbol of Chinese brutality. [67]
While the international media have publicized the treatment of many who have sought justice, we cannot know how many other Chinese citizens have been victims of abuse or have watched helplessly when others close to them were abused. Nor can we fathom what it does to a person to become the abuser. What has been presented here are words on paper, but these words do not capture what it does to a man’s heart to place his sexual proclivities above a child’s innocence, what it does to a man’s future to place making money above another’s safety and well-being, and what it does to a man’s soul to torture a fellow human being or treat his body as a commodity for profit.
People who know China can’t help asking “Where are the Chinese people who used to be gentle and kind?” Part II will explore traditional Chinese culture, its moral standards, and how China’s Moral Crisis came to be.
Endnotes:
[1] Chinese Business View, “Four Officials Gang Rape Several Underage Girls Causing a 12-Year-Old Hemorrhaging,” November 30, 2011.http://news.hsw.cn/system/2011/11/30/051171491.shtml.
[2] China West, “Following-up on The Four Men Suspected Raping 12-Year-Old Girl Case – Police Set It as Having Sex with Underage Prostitute,” December 1, 2011.http://news.cnwest.com/content/2011-12/01/content_5622196.htm.
[3] Phoenix, “Shaanxi’s Setting Officials Gang Raping 12-Year-Old Girl as Having Sex with Underage Prostitute Caused Public Outrage,” December 6, 2011. http://phtv.ifeng.com/program/zbjsj/detail_2011_12/06/11130609_0.shtml. [4] Global Voices, “China: Outrage as ‘Underage Prostitution’ Law Protects Child Rapists,” December 8, 2011.http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/12/08/china-outrage-as-underage-prostitution-law-protects-child-rapists/.
[5] Jinghua, “Follow-up on a Lady in Xinyang City, Henan Province Using Her Real Name to Report Being Raped by Official: The Suspect Was Detained,” November 22, 2011.http://news.jinghua.cn/351/c/201111/22/n3543980.shtml.
[6] Xinhua, “A Female Teacher in Guizhou Province Was Raped by An Official but Police Claimed ‘Wearing Condom Does not Count as Rape,’” July 12, 2011.http://news.xinhuanet.com/legal/2011-07/12/c_121657103.htm.
[7] Wikipedia, “Deng Yujiao incident.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Yujiao_incident.
[8] Yahoo China, “Party Secretary of the Shenzhen City Maritime Safety Administration Suspected to Molest 11-Year-Old Girl.”http://yxk.cn.yahoo.com/articles/20110617/6plj.html.
[9] Wikipedia, “Yang Jia.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Jia.
[10] Youtube, “Netizen in Mainland China Created MTV for Yang Jie.”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnKFalQ-v-Q.
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