Friday, July 30, 2010

New "Red Guards" Created by Jay Chen 哈岗学委用新“红卫兵”作政治工具



School Kids being Used as Tools for Jay Chen (Vice President of School Board)

哈岗学区“孔子学堂”再引争论 - 哈岗学委用新“红卫兵”作政治工具

Using Students as Tool is Immoral


陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

【大纪元7月30日讯】(大纪元记者袁玫洛杉矶哈岗报导)

哈岗学区设立“孔子学堂”,引发众多反对声浪,22日例行会议上,陈凯、前学区总监克莱默(John Kramar)、哈岗居民鲁迪.欧贝德(Rudy Obad)等反对者出席会议。
  
5月20日陈凯与总监克莱默(John Kramar)在哈岗学区审查孔子课堂教材,发现其中渗透着共产主义意识形态,此事已经引起各地的关注,当天鲁迪.欧贝德再次强调不反对中国人、不反对学中文,但是以他的越战经历,坚持反共,不要共产党进到哈岗、更不要共产党的钱。
  
他表示,哈岗学区并不短缺经费,为什么一定要接受汉办资助﹖学区一定要用共产党的钱,才能让学生学到中文?拿了钱就得聘请来自中国或有共产主义思想的教师来教课。
  
陈凯表示,不是学不学中文的问题,而是要弄明白教材的来源,如今已然审查出孔子课堂教材,渗透着共产主义意识形态,暗藏共产党思想,不熟悉共党者,不知不觉就被洗脑,难道我们要希特勒来教德文、金正日来教韩文、卡斯楚来教西班牙文?
  
当天,有7位来自威尔森高中的学生,他们拿着标语表达支持“孔子学堂”,他们认为学历史当然都会受到影响,但是学生是有足够判断力,他们不认同上了中国资助的孔子学堂后,就会成为共产党。

Jay Chen is a leftist radical brainwashing schoolkids with Marxism/communism.
  
在陈凯网站“陈凯一语”中针对威尔森高中的学生的举动表示,“用人生观尚未形成的学童作为政治工具、打击政敌以满足个人权欲野心是毛共与所有专制政体惯用的伎俩。红卫兵在文革中的被用、被欺、被弃就是一例。 陈介飞学委在学委会上用他的共产心态腐蚀、利用、伤害学童以达自己的政治图谋与野心。此举令人发指。”
  
陈凯说﹕“陈介飞同时用“种族主义”的美左惯用标签攻击反对者。 但事实是: 我们这些抗议者有黑人、白人与亚裔人,而支持者们则清一色是亚裔华人。正是陈介飞们在试图混淆理念与族群。”
  
陈凯表示,如此利用不成熟的孩子做政治工具的行为,非常不道德,是共产党的那一套。陈凯目前正在向学区收集有关教委们前去中国是否接受汉办资助的资料。
  
在会前记者曾讯问哈岗学区教委陈介飞,但他以“没有时间”不接受采访,而无所得知他的意见。当天APAPA南加分会会长黄福蓬以个人身份出席表示赞成“孔子学堂”,他表示推广中文教育非常重要,唯一在哈岗学区出了问题,遭到一些保守人士反对,应由学区来决定教什么,没有必要成为政治化。◇

A Dainty Word, ‘Incident’ for Tiananmen 天安门屠杀不是一个“事件”而是一个“暴行”


Tiananmen Massacre, June 4, 1989 1989年6月4日的天安门大屠杀

 陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

陈凯一语  Kai Chen's Words:

1989年的天安门大屠杀既不是一个什么“事件”,也不是一个什么“悲剧”如美西的对中共绥靖者们常定义的。 从道德清晰的眼光去看:天安门大屠杀是一个反人类的暴行如中共在人类历史上所犯下的一切血腥举动。

The Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 was never an "incident". Nor was it "tragic", as some leftists in the West and America often refer to it as such. If you have just a little sense of human decency and an iota of moral clarity, you should conclude that Tiananmen Square Massacre was an atrocity committed by the anti-humanity communist authority in China.


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A Dainty Word, ‘Incident’
天安门屠杀不是一个“事件”而是一个“暴行”


July 29, 2010 10:50 AM By Jay Nordlinger

Corner - National Review

In Impromptus today, I express a little disgust at something I found in Encyclopedia Britannica. I was needing some information about the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 — how many were killed, etc. And the relevant entry was headed “Tiananmen Square incident.” I found that word “incident” a little . . . weak. And a little outrageous. How dainty we are, when speaking of ChiCom mass murder!

I have some follow-up thoughts. Should we refer to that event in 1770 as the “Boston incident” — you know, the one in which Crispus Attucks died? (As massacres go, of course, the Boston one was pretty small beer: five dead.) How about what the Soviets did to the Poles in the “Katyn incident”? And here I walk a little down Memory Lane.

In fact, let me quote from a speech I gave — okay, have found it, thanks to Mr. Google. This was a speech given for the 20th anniversary of the Harvard Salient, the conservative newspaper at . . . well, you know.

I had a class here on the history of post-war foreign policy, taught by a nice ADA liberal — a Kennedy-Johnson liberal, a solid academic citizen, a good guy. We had in that class a German — a West German, no doubt — who was more or less a communist. I once heard him speak of the “Katyn accident,” referring to the massacre committed by Soviet troops in Poland. One day — after we’d written some papers, I guess — the professor called both of us up to the front of the class to speak, in opposition to each other. We were to debate the origins of the Cold War: Who was responsible? Uncle Sam or Uncle Joe? I realized we were being posited as extremes. One fellow was speaking for — and here I am only being honest — the communist lie; the other fellow, me, was speaking for what was only the clear truth of the matter, nothing fancy.

In other words, nothing “conservative,” nothing “interpretive” — just the plain facts, which everyone used to know. At any rate, I found “Tiananmen Square incident,” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, irksome. Almost unjust. Maybe one day, when China’s one-party dictatorship, to which everyone bows, is on the ash heap of history, the Britannica people will find it safe and natural to change the heading.

P.S. That German kid, from school daze? Probably a big businessman now, the owner of five factories. Alternatively, he is plotting the reconstitution of the Stasi. Hard to say.

P.P.S. Reading over this here Corner entry, I noticed that I have “Encyclopedia Britannica” — no “the” — in one place, and “the Encyclopedia Britannica” in another. Why the inconsistency? I don’t know. Ear, I guess. (Or sloppiness.) As the girl with the gun sang, “doin’ what comes natur’lly.”

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

What's So Great about America 美国精神的伟大



陈凯一语:

我常发现许多来美国的中文人士们并不理解与欣赏美国的理念与精神。 他们常用“文化等同论”与“道德相对论”为自己的反美崇专制的返祖复古心态辩解。 生活在自由中却向往“人间天堂”的共产与专制的幻梦是中文系的人们与美左共通的病态情结。

Kai Chen's Words:

I often find that many who came from China to America have never understood (or attempted to understand) American spirit and American ideals. They often use "multi-culturalism" and "moral relativism" to argue/advocate for their yearning for a "perfect despotism" and a worship of a "cultural atavism". Coming to the West/America to look for something to defy/destroy the West/America, and using freedom to search for a way to diminish/destroy freedom is the pathology these Chinese share with the American left.


陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

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What's So Great about America

美国精神的伟大


Book Link 书籍链锁:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895261537/ref=ase_zadercom-20/104-0038686-1735950#_

Outstanding observations about and defense of America

July 15, 2002
By Joel L. Gandelman (San Diego, CA USA)

This review is from: What's So Great About America (Hardcover)

What a shame 21st century USA is so polarized where being a liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican (etc.) means either entirely accepting without question ideas along party or ideological lines -- or entirely without question rejecting them. People don't want to give "the (domestic political) enemy" a full hearing, let alone even partly CONSIDER a foe's arguments, even if they're reasoned and actually make SENSE.

It's a shame because this book (published by the conservative publishing house Regnery, which is itself like waving a red flag in front of a bull for some people) is so engaging, well-written, convincing and solid that Dinesh D'Souza may one day be considered a modern day Alexis de Tocqueville.

Three fascinating levels mark this highly perceptive book:

1. D'Souza, who became a US citizen in 1991, shares how his life would have been quite different if he had grown up in his native India.

2. He makes fascinating observations about how US life and culture differ from various parts of the world, especially the Third World. These are the ones future generations may consider on the same level as de Tocqueville's.

3. And then there is material directly related to the book's title. He makes the case, in a nutshell, that other cultures (especially fundamentalist Islamic) detest the United States because Americans are inner-directed and can write their own life's script, while Islamic culture seeks a life controlled and dictated by others.


One key conclusion certainly will not endear him to Islamic fundamentalists. He says the Islamic world is nothing without oil revenues.

"The only reason it (the Islamic world) makes the news is by killing people," he writes. "When is the last time you opened the newspaper to read about a great Islamic discovery or invention? While China and India, two other empires that were eclipsed by the West, have embraced Western technology and even assumed a leadership role in some areas, Islam's contributions to modern science and technology is negligible."

In this book, written after 911, he concludes that terrorism is merely "a desperate strike against a civilization that the fundamentalists know they have no power to conquer" so they try to "disrupt and terrify the people of America and the West."

The book is worth its price ALONE for his observations on how American culture differs from the third world and many Islamic countries: Americans have to be convinced they are fighting a war for noble reasons; young people go away to college and don't return, whereas in other countries this would be like "abandoning one's offspring"; other cultures cherish age, the US worships youth; people welcome visitors for long periods in the Third World where Americans want to get rid of visitors within days. And more.

D'Souza also takes on the "multiculturalists" who, he writes, detest the melting pot idea and "want immigrants to be in America but not of America." And he shows many flashes of great wit. Two of them:

--On French criticism of the US: "Many Americans find it hard to take the French critique seriously, coming as it does from men who carry handbags."

--On calls for reparations for African-Americans (he completely DEMOLISHES arguments for reparations) he writes debating foe Jesse Jackson: "I found the concept of this rich, successful man -- who arrived by private jet, who speaks at the Democratic National Convention, whose son is a congressman - identifying himself as a victim of oppression a bit puzzling and amusing."


D'Souza decimates critics' arguments against American foreign policy, history and culture. . But his greatest analysis is how World War II's "Greatest Generation," tempered by surviving the Great Depression and the brutal war, upheld traditional values by cherishing necessity and duty -- only to fail to replicate these values in their offspring who made answering their inner voices, pursing their own desires and personal authenticities the focus of their lives....until. Sept. 11.

"Only now are those Americans who grew up during the 1960s coming to appreciate the virtues,...of this older sturdier culture of courage, nobility and sacrifice," he writes. "It is this culture that will protect the liberties of all Americans."

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Absolute codswallop? Time for a reality check

May 4, 2002
By Darren B. O'Connor (Norfolk, Virginia United States)

This review is from: What's So Great About America (Hardcover)

...an important point the author made in the book.

If all cultures are equal, if everything is relative, if no culture can really be termed "superior" to another, why is it that every year, all over the world, millions of people vote with their feet for America and the American way of life?

People immigrate here from every corner of the world, and it's virtually a one way traffic. How many Americans choose to emigrate to Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Thailand, or Poland? But people from other countries are so eager to come here that they will do it illegally if they cannot do it any other way. If America is so terrible, how did we become the richest, most prosperous nation on earth? I know many would say it's because we are oppressors, and we have exploited the rest of the world, both people and natural resources, until we are on top, but this doesn't wash. While we are no angels, to be sure, neither are we really comparable to history's REAL oppressors, such as the Nazis, or the communists (who not only killed more millions of people than the Nazis, but had a far, far worse record of raping and polluting the environment than any Western country). I have yet to hear a multiculturalist give me a convincing answer to this.

Multiculturalists, like most modern leftists, live in an idealized universe; they have long since lost the habit of testing ideas against their actual results in the real world. If you look the facts in the face, it's very hard to disagree with most of what D'Souza says.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Plagiarism epidemic in China 抄袭偷窃模仿在中文文化中成风受褒扬

陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

陈凯一语:

扼杀个体价值、磨灭独立思维、崇尚引经据典、盲从圣贤名流、、是中文文化学术界的普遍腐败现象。 中文本身的“不可造”性是这种文化腐败的工具性原因。 说中文的人们普遍缺乏个体语言词汇。 造字是不可能,造词者极少。 新的概念自然就极难产生。

Kai Chen's Words:

Eliminating individual values, suppressing independent thoughts, worshipping status-quo, fearing the famous and the established are a few factors which contribute to the intellectual corruption in the Chinese educational system. Cheating, copying, Plagiarizing, blackmailing, sabotaging others, etc. are prevalent in China's colleges/schools. The Chinese character-based syllabic language, with its written characters only to be memorized, not created by the individuals, is another important reason for curbing creativity among the language users. Very few Chinese-speaking people can find their own original thoughts and expressions. New concepts are killed before they are germinated in the first place.


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Plagiarism epidemic shuts down U.S. program in China

抄袭偷窃模仿在中文文化中成风受褒扬


By Elizabeth Redden

It's not uncommon for colleges to discontinue academic programs overseas for financial reasons. But Centenary College, in New Jersey, is shutting down an M.B.A. program in Asia to contain a plagiarism epidemic. About 400 students are currently enrolled in the program at locations in Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan.

"The college is extremely concerned with the welfare of the Chinese students involved in the program, but must note that its review revealed evidence of widespread plagiarism among other issues, at a level that ordinarily would have resulted in students' immediate dismissal from the college," Debra Albanese, Centenary's vice president for strategic advancement, said in a statement. "Despite that, in an effort to afford students every fair possibility, the college has opted to attempt to reach an amicable solution, in lieu of any such dismissal. The students were offered a choice to receive a tuition refund in exchange for a standard release in higher education or take a comprehensive exam in order to earn a degree."

Students have until July 30 to make the choice, and so far, according to Centenary, all but two who've replied have accepted the refund. College officials declined to elaborate beyond the written statement, and did not answer specific questions in regard to what, if any, judicial procedures or preventative programs were in place at the satellite locations, or the nature of the academic misconduct uncovered.

A number of experts, however, said that the most surprising element of this case was that Centenary took the problem seriously enough to shut down its program. "For a lot of the American schools or foreign schools (in China), this is a cash cow," noted Kathryn Mohrman, who is director of the University Design Consortium at Arizona State University and who has also been president of Colorado College and executive director of the Johns Hopkins University campus in Nanjing. "You don't want to be too persnickety or you lose the revenue that comes from these programs."

"I would certainly say," Mohrman added, "Centenary is not the only school that has suffered this problem."

Academic misconduct is a particularly pervasive problem in China, where it infiltrates the higher education system from the undergraduate ranks on up. Increasingly, commentators have speculated about whether the country's reputation for plagiarism and research misconduct will hamper the rise of Chinese universities, per a recent series of news articles to this effect in the American (CBS News: "Rampant Academic Cheating Hurts China's Ambition"), British (The Economist: "Replicating Success"), and state-run Chinese press (China Daily: "Academic Corruption Undermining Higher Education"). (A new post on Inside Higher Ed's World View blog also explores the issue.)

An opinion piece published last week in China Daily, "The Onus of Plagiarism is on Individuals," places the ultimate responsibility for plagiarism on the culprits, but also affirms the responsibility of universities to set strict standards in this regard. "Unfortunately, in our quest for instant success, honesty has been thrown out of the windows," the author, Ben Lim Chiow Ang, wrote. "Professors and students alike take short cuts and blatantly copied other authors' work, partly or wholesale. Old-fashioned integrity is a virtue of a bygone era."

"I believe it is time to go back to the drawing board for all the stakeholders in the academic circle," he continued. "The right values of academic integrity must be embedded in the culture of our universities and colleges."

The collapse of Centenary's M.B.A. program in China raises questions of how best to address issues of academic integrity at remote and foreign campuses, where prevailing academic norms can differ from those at U.S. or other Western universities. But certain aspects of cheating are also universal.

"The more an educational experience is viewed as being purely instrumental, that is as a means to an end — in terms of a career — then it does seem that it is going to be readily subject to shortcuts, because from the student perspective there is a sense that everything is simply a matter of credentials," said Gary Pavela, director of academic integrity at Syracuse University. Centenary's program is typical of the bulk of U.S. programs at branch campuses, which are generally pre-professional in nature and which cater to students who see a distinct career advantage to enrolling.

"I think there needs to be some component of the educational enterprise that has something to do with the joy in learning in and of itself, the aspect of learning that is exciting and gripping and seems immediately to be relevant to a student, beyond (just being) some ticket that they have to punch to get a job in the future. And that's a pedagogical issue," said Pavela. He added, too, that personal trust between the instructor and student is crucial in preventing cheating and plagiarism. "And it does seem to me that there are risks in these programs, that the greater the distance between the teacher and the student, the greater the breakdown in trust," he said.

"This issue of trust is a fundamental human, anthropological fact," Pavela said. "We are highly cooperative in small groups and the more we broaden the group and create distance between members of the group, then the more creative we're going to have to be to affirm trust."

The issue of plagiarism at U.S. branch campuses or overseas locations represents a new twist on a perennial problem. Academic misconduct among international students at campuses in the United States has long been a source of concern for professors and foreign student advisers alike, and orientation programs to teach Western academic norms have become a fixture at many institutions. At issue are cultural differences in academic practice. Citation practices, for instance, vary widely around the world, and in fact in some countries it's considered a sign of respect to parrot back the words of a learned scholar without attribution. And shared conceptions of what's common knowledge — and therefore doesn't merit attribution — can be vexed even within a single cultural context, let alone a cross-cultural one.

"If you're in a situation where you have international students in your classroom in the U.S., or you're at a branch campus with a classroom full of home country students, if you're bringing in a new cultural norm for how you deal with cheating and your definition of cheating or plagiarism, not only do you need to say it and put it in writing but you need to say it more than once," said Michael Smithee, an international higher education consultant who retired in 2005 from Syracuse's' Center for International Services. Smithee also co-wrote "U.S. Classroom Culture," a resource published by NAFSA: The Association of International Educators.

"You've got to be willing to repeat how you approach cheating and what cheating is, and be very clear, every time, so that by the time the course is done, the students will be tired of hearing it. And if they're tired of hearing it, it probably means that they understand it a little more," Smithee said.

One final lesson of the Centenary case may also be that institutional culture matters, too. "Sometimes, something like this happens and they put all the blame on the students, and sometimes something like this happens and they put all the blame on the teacher, and I like when they look at it culturally and say what are we doing as a culture that makes it so pervasive," said Teddi Fishman, director of the International Center for Academic Integrity, based at Clemson University.

Although she wasn't speaking to the specifics of what happened at Centenary, "Generally speaking," Fishman said, "if you have a problem this large, it's not just the student and it's not just the teacher."

从"文字笼罐"到"文字狱" From Chinese Language to Tyranny/Despotism

A Chinese chamberpot from ancient time

陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

从"文字笼罐"到"文字狱"(中文重贴)

From Chinese Language to Tyranny/Despotism - On Chinese Language Defects (in Chinese)


陈凯一语:

只有当我们认知中文语言的危害的时候,我们才能开始认知中国文化的危害,也才能真正开始寻找素毒洗灵的工具。

Kai Chen's Words:

Only when we understand the defects of the Chinese character-based syllabic language and the harm it has inflicted upon the Chinese population, we can truly start to understand the harm the Chinese culture has inflicted upon people in Asia. Then we can finally start to look for tools to cleanse our souls and mind.


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一个好友在中国入狱服刑时发现并保留了这幅象征中国人们的真实状态的画面。 我在此深表感谢。
A good friend gives me this cartoon he preserved when he was serving a sentence in a Chinese prison for crime against the state. Here I thank him for bringing forth this poignant cartoon for everyone to contemplate.


从“文字笼罐”到“文字狱”

从中国文字的虚无特质到中国专制文化的虚无特质 – 看中国单音节形象文字与中国专制政治文化的必然联系

陈凯 5/18/2006

将这一话题提出实有如有人大叫“皇帝没有穿衣服”一样,定会引起哗然大波。 但我想在人们在恼怒成羞,或恼羞成怒之后,定睛定神地仔细看一看,也许一些人会静下来想一想。 也许一些人会反思反省一下,意识到也许自己的意识形成确实受到了中国单音节形象文字的负向影响与滕缚。

我想我现在的尝试是一个前所未有的开拓: 试图用一种以虚无作特质的文字去阐述一个真实存在的概念。 按逻辑这有如用笼子去解放概念,用镣铐去使奴隶自由。 我曾用英文阐述过这个观点。 那并不难, 基于英文的内在的自由,抽象,逻辑,定义与附义的特质。 英文作底与说英文的人们也很容易懂得我的观点。 但用一种病语去分析,阐述此语的病态,却需要相当的努力,耐心,小心,技巧与勇气。 我决定还是试一下,因为我的读者与听众是运用此病语的人们,(虽然他们的大多数还没有意识到)也是深受其害的人们。

如果说语言文字是运送、交流信息知识的,内附价值体系的运送工具(Vehicle),中国单音节象形文字有如一辆辆悬空的“笼罐”式无马,无辕,无轮的旧马车。 说“笼”是因为它的囚禁人的思维的特质。但人在笼中最少还能向外看。我用“罐”是指人进入这个牢中后连向外看的可能都被杜绝了。 只有很少的光线可以透过“哈哈玻璃”进入罐内。 自罐中向外望,所有的事物都是畸形的伪物,无一真实。 说“旧”是因为中国文字的甲骨,巫术符号的几千年古源。 说“马车”是因为它起码还是一种语言文字。 说“悬空”是因为它既不前行,也无方向。 说无马是因为它没有始动力。 说无辕是因为它无从依附。 说无轮是说它无路可行。

在此我给这旧马车加一个力,那就是我。 我也给它加上一个辕与轮,那就是我的自知。 我也给这马车一条实路,那就是英文作底。 我现在试图用我的力量与自知在英文的底线上将一个真实的概念向前拖。 我不知结果会如何。 但我尽力而为。

中文的基点有两大特性:

1. 中文的“不可再造”性: 中文有50,000 多字,全是中国人祖先创造遗留下来的。 没有任何个人可以造字。
2. 改造中文的“官方”性: 只有代表整体的政府,如中共政权,才可简化文字并用权力传播它。

基于这两大性质,我可用逻辑引申为: 中文创始的前提是人的不自由化、 非个体化与奴役化。 这个前提是:世界上所有的知识与概念已被中国的祖先所发现,所创造。所有后来的中国人只是去记忆,去继承,去遵循,去服从。大部分中国人都认为人没有个人意志,也无个人选择,他只是环境,文化,制度的产物。 这种对人的认识与他们对中文文字的无能为力,和他们的被传统文字,文化奴役感质为相关。 所以讲中文作为中国专制文化制度的帮凶是不为过的。

另一个引申是:由于这两种性质,中国人的个性从一开始就被灭绝在摇篮里了。 中国人对群体与政府的尊崇是绝对的和来自官方的绝对的文字垄断权上的。

中国人的无神崇祖的现象从其始就与中国文字的僵化,绝对性相关,基于中文的不可再造性。 中文的创始者从一开始就没有将中国人视为自由的个体。 这种文字产生的基点并不是将语言作为工具,将人作为自由的,主动的,独立的个体去发挥,解放人的创造力的,而是将人作为被动的,消极的奴隶去控制,限制与奴化侍皇,侍群的。 当一个中国的孩子拿起毛笔临摹他祖先的笔法的时候 就是他在开始编织奴役自己的牢笼的时候。从那一刻起,残忍地与必然地,已经没有人将他作为一个自由人。 他自己也将自己的自由锁在那“笼罐”的悬空马车里了。 他将对那灵魂与头脑的自我禁锢付出沉重的代价。 如果他有意愿,能力与勇气,他也要用时间与巨大的努力去打破那他祖先留下的,他自己编造的灵智牢笼,寻求再生。 那是多大的浪费呀! 且不说事实证实只有极少数的人能打破中文的强大禁锢。

我现在用一点篇幅去阐述中文的具体弊病:

1. 由于人的生理局限,在五万中文字中,只有五千中文字是常用字。在几千年人类知识的积累中,已经超载的中文字在近代又受到了信息爆炸的巨大冲击。 字义的超载量已远远超出每个中文字的在古代的原设计值。 一字多义,多字一义,一音多字,一字多音,更将原来定义化就低的中文字进一步浑浊化。 每一辆旧马车其实已在这信息爆炸中被炸得粉碎。 或者说每一辆旧马车的过度超载已将中文字浑义,淡义到近于无义,虚义,甚至反义的地步。 试图用这旧马车去装载航天穿梭机只是一个病态人的臆想幻梦。

仅举“法治”一词为例: 人们从不分“法治”与“法制”之间的区别。我也不知他们之间有何区别。 但在英文中,“Rule of Law”与“Rule by Law”是反义。 前者有“人以法治政”,后者有“政以法制人”的含义。 两词的中译都是“法治”(或法制),孰不知前者是民主中的成分,后者是专制的定义。既不知什么是“法治”,何谓“法治人治”之争。 中国古代的“法家”应解为“君以法治人”,“儒家”应解为“君以礼治人”。两者都以维君权为目的,无本质区别。“儒法之争”也只是虚无的“权力之争”而已,旨在蒙人混脑。

这种“混义”,“反义”造成了中文的“不赋义”或“泛赋义”性。 任何人都可以将任何字在任何时间,任何地点歪释曲解,随机而用,使中文完全成为主观文字。 这种主观文字只能被定义为“虚无文字”。 任何的虚无文字只能作为玩弄“文字游戏”的专制者的专权刑具,而绝不能成为建树未来的民主者的追求自由的客观工具。

2. 基于人脑两半球的感知分工,中文用形象文字的表象加义输入人的抽象半脑,造成表象与抽象实质在思维时的颠倒与混乱。中国人在辩论,交流时不能在抽象实质的理性空间交锋,而常常沦落到猜忌与人身攻击的权力斗争的泥坑里,沦落到“救脸护皮”的俗套中,就是这个道理。 中文基其形象表达本应输入在人的艺术创作半脑中,这种“理,艺”的冲突输入就是“黄河浑水”的源泉。

由于冲突输入而导致的思维混乱大大降低了中国人自由,独立的程度与人格人质。 群体的专制(大政府,无社会)便成为了暂时维持表面秩序的唯一共有选择。

3. 中文中在名词与动词上无复数单数之分。 这直接导致了中国人误将复数群体作为不可分的有机单元。 个附群,群压个,个群不分便成为了与法西斯,纳粹理论有同无异的逻辑特质。人可有可无。 国不可不无。

4.中文字动词缺少时态。 这导致了中国人思维方向性的经常混乱。 过去,现在与将来在中国人的思维中常常颠三倒四,严重危害了中国人的客观历史感。

5. 因中文文字音形分离,儿童学习中文字时只通过记忆。这导致了中国儿童晚期阅读,往往比英文儿童晚三年。人的创造力来自拆散组合。 中文因不给人拆散组合的机会而窒息人的创造力。

6. 由于中文的不定义性,多义性,主观性与虚无性,中文绝不可作为科学与法律语言。 从古至今中国在自然科学与社会科学领域里是真空,与中文的虚无性因果相关。

7. 简化中文只是掩耳盗铃之技,解决不了中文的本质的单音节形象弊症,解决不了中文固有的虚无性。

中文对人的异化是中国专制文化,中国专制制度对人的异化的基点组成环节。 中文早就应该进入文字考古博物馆里去,早就应该只作为艺术供人研究与欣赏,而绝不能作为工具为人所用创造未来。

中国人的祖先,由于形象文字的输入和限制,对自然界的认知只能停滞在表象的“金,木,水,火,土”上,而用不能借逻辑的力量走入分子,原子,电子,中子的层次上。 也就如中国的五音乐理,简谱在音乐领域中永远写不出表达多层次的人的心灵感情的宏伟的交响乐章,只有西乐“五线谱”才能承此大任。

以英文为主的西方多音节字母文字是符合人的生理结构的“人”的文字。 它以抽象符号的自由组合与拆散组词、赋义输入人脑的抽象、理性的语言半球。人由此自由于表象与实质的输入冲突。 它以人的自由,独立为前提而设。它是为人服务的交流,储藏工具。 任何人可在任何时间,任何地点,出于任何目的将字母拆散组合,自造新字去表达新创造,新概念,用不着任何人的许可。 它的内在的逻辑性,定义性,客观性使它成为理想的科学与法律语言。 它是自由的语言,解放人的创造力的语言,表达人性,人的灵智的语言。 它是道德的语言。

用英文取代中文,成为中国人共用的法律、科学、教育语言,成为中国人走入人性,走向未来的工具,已是理不容辞,德不容辞,大势所趋。 陷在“国粹”的怪圈里的,崇祖拜中文的人们应该醒醒了。 请用你们头脑中的人性特质去思考,用逻辑,理性,道德去反省反思,而不要用你们的脸面,肤色,文化习性与虚无的群体认同去思考。 1+1 在任何人的脑子里都等于2。

请加入人的行列。在那人的行列中,只有自由与尊严,没有耻辱。

(Kai Chen 陈凯)

Monday, July 26, 2010

New 'Red Dawn' to attack communism again! 红色曙光 - 少有的好莱坞反共电影

陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

MEDIA MATTERS

Trailer Link 红色曙光拍摄片段视频: http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=164269

New 'Red Dawn' to attack communism again!

红色曙光 - 少有的好莱坞反共电影


Critics outraged, call remake of '80s classic 'porn for survivalist militia types'

Posted: June 11, 2010
12:00 am Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

A movie expected to be a hard-core remake of the original communism-bashing "Red Dawn" of two decades back – where Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze staged a shoot-'em-up against invading Russians in the Colorado mountains – now is being met not with amusement at the entertainment but condemnation because it isn't "correct."

The invaders this time are Chinese.

"Later this year, America's dream factory will foist upon an already blooded-up America a remake of 1984's 'Red Dawn.' It's probably the most unnecessary, irresponsible, Sinophobic film in America's history, and that's saying a lot," wrote a commentary at The Awl, a New York-based website that boasts of its discussions on "the issues of the day."

"In it, the Chinese invade and subjugate Americans to pinko commie rule all under the guise of 'helping' the nation that has become too irresponsible to take care of itself. It is a paranoia tale of an America where our children no longer get stupid Chinese character tattoos because they want to; they get them because they have to. It's basically porn for survivalist militia types who believe it is 'real' scenarios like that that justify everything from the sale of assault rifles to electing nationalist fear-mongers."

Scene from coming remake of "Red Dawn."

The original "Red Dawn" focused on freedom's victory over communism and featured the up-and-comers Swayze and Co. as a resistance group made up of highschoolers fighting back the oppressive Soviet Union. According to Jason Apuzzo at Libertas Film Magazine, the team members "fight the Russkies in the Colorado hills, kick a lot of commie-Spetsnaz ass, and otherwise shout 'Wolverines!'"

He said he thought the new movie was a gag at first.

"Hollywood doesn't do this sort of thing. This isn't the 1980s anymore. Wake up! This is the era of 'Avatar,' of 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' of Sean Penn hanging with the mullahs in Iran. The communist Chinese aren't our enemy – they're our friends! They make our TVs and T-shirts and disposable ink cartridges. Our real enemies are American corporations, environmental polluters, and all those blonde chicks on Fox News," he wrote.

The London Guardian reports that some of the images in the movie include, "Helping You Back On Your Feet," showing a Chinese hand reaching down to an American hand. Another is "Rebuilding Your Reputation."

A communist star is imposed over an image of the United States with a large crack down the center.

Poster from coming remake of "Red Dawn."

"The original 'Red Dawn,' written by John Milius … was a huge hit on its release in 1984," the Guardian report said. 'Its hyper-patriotism and depiction of ordinary American teenagers fighting off the 'red menace' chimed with the mood of Ronald Reagan's America. … The new 'Red Dawn' is expected the follow in those cultural footsteps, albeit with a different enemy and reflecting … America's fears over economic decline."

The movie has a twist that may offend some: "Collaborators" within the country who work with the Chinese. Apuzzo also cited the posters from the movie's work.

"Is it just me, or is there something distinctly Obama-esque about these posters? What these posters reveal is that the 'Red Dawn' remake may actually go where the original film did not go (largely due to the fact that the original was made during the Reagan Administration), which is in equating certain tendencies in contemporary American liberalism with Chinese-style communism (!)," he wrote.

"That would be an extraordinary thing for a Hollywood studio to do nowadays," he said.

Reported the Guardian, "Perhaps the strongest symbol of America's decline and China's rise in the 'Red Dawn' remake does not come from the movie's sets or script or even its plot. It comes from the fact that much of the movie was shot in and around the battered industrial city of Detroit. The city's emptying streets and many abandoned factories were seen as the perfect real-life backdrop for the city's war scenes."

The new movie, projected for a $75 million budget, is to star Tom Cruise's son and feature music from Toby Keith.

Apuzzo reported it now is in post-production.

"The new 'Red Dawn' looks to be one of the most intensely anti-communist films since 'My Son John' from 1952. Yet it's set in the world of today," he said.

According to the Daily Finance fixture on AOL, the plot is:

Set against the backdrop of contemporary politics, the film begins with an American withdrawal from Iraq. The president decides to redeploy troops to Taiwan, where escalating Chinese militarism is threatening America's ally. At the same time, he also welcomes the former Soviet republic of Georgia into NATO, unleashing Russian worries that America is spreading its sphere of influence deep into Eastern Europe. Having destabilized relations with two of the world’s largest powers, the president then claims that the U.S. is only partly to blame for a global economic meltdown, further escalating tensions with China and ultimately leading to the invasion of the Pacific Northwest.

According to the report, the movie already is causing ripples in China.

"In the past week Beijing's largest paper, The Global Times, ran two editorials on the film, proclaiming, 'U.S. reshoots Cold War movie to demonize China,' and 'American movie plants hostile seeds against China.'"

According to the New Yorker, the U.S. "can do better than this."

The Awl noted the movie will come "just in time for midterm elections already foul with the tea party's red-white-and-blue jingoism."

The commentary continued, "Even worse, it's just another in a long, tired, example of how America’s thinking about China has not progressed past Rohmer's 'Fu Manchu.'"

Blog participants were outraged at the theme of fighting against communism:

"I just am dismayed when films pander to people's fears and prejudices. The audience for this is the same(ish) as for 'The Passion,'" said one.

"I'm sure that plenty of kooks and knuckledraggers will get all excited by the flag-waving and the jingoism for about five minutes, but … they'll have forgotten about it completely in a month," said another.

According to the movie's own MGM website, the plot develops when "an American city awakens to the surreal sight of foreign paratroopers dropping from the sky – shockingly, the U.S. has been invaded and their hometown is the initial target. Quickly and without warning, the citizens find themselves prisoners and their town under enemy occupation. Determined to fight back, a group of young patriots seek refuge in the surrounding woods, training and reorganizing themselves into a guerrilla group of fighters."

Saturday, July 24, 2010

SHOULD YOU TEACH YOUR KIDS CHINESE? 你要你孩子学中文吗?

陈凯一语:

中文是一个专制语言,基于它的词汇的混义、多义、复义、反义、无义。 只有那些有枪有强权的人才有给词语定义的地位与权力。 中文决不能用于科学、法律与教育。 中文是一种感性文字基于其艺术输入,由此它是不能作为理性交流与知识储藏的工具。 中文造就应该进入人类的“语言博物馆”里去了。

Kai Chen's Words:

Chinese language fosters despotism, for the Chinese vocabulary is extremely confusing, to the degree that it is so undefinable that it is entirely subjective. Only those with guns and power can use force and coercion to define/dictate what their words mean. The Chinese language cannot be applied to science, law and education, for it is sensation/art/image based. Therefore the Chinese language is too defective a tool to be used for communication and storage of knowledge (Indexation is a huge problem.) This pictorial language, along with other primitive languages based on syllabic characters, should have put into the human language museum long time ago.


陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

Link to my article "From Chinese Language to Slavery" (从文字笼罐到文字狱): http://www.kaichenforum.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=952

Link to related articles: "The English Language and Freedom" (英文语言奠基自由精神): http://www.youpai.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=11218#11218

-----------------------------------------------------

SHOULD YOU TEACH YOUR KIDS CHINESE?

你要你孩子学中文吗?


While China’s rise is real, Chinese is in no way rising at the same rate. Robert Lane Greene explains why ...

When I get into cocktail-party conversation about language and politics, someone inevitably says “and of course there’s the rise of China.” It seems like any conversation these days has to work in the rise-of-China angle. Technology is changing society? Well, it’s the flood of cheap tech from China. Worried about your job? It’s the rise of China. Terrified of nuclear Iran? If only that rising China would stop resisting sanctions. What’s for lunch? Well, we’d all better develop a taste for Chinese food.

I was reminded of this walking down New York’s Park Avenue last night, when I saw a pre-school offering immersion courses in French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese. For years now, we’ve been seeing stories like this: Manhattan parents, always eager to steal some advantage for their children, are hiring Mandarin-speaking nannies, so their children can learn what some see as the language of the future.

But while China’s rise is real, Chinese is in no way rising at the same rate. Yes, Mandarin Chinese is the world’s most commonly spoken language, if you simply count the number of speakers. But the rub is that they’re almost all in China. Yes, we’ve also read that Mandarin is advancing in Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas Chinese communities (which have traditionally spoken one of China’s other languages, such as Cantonese). And China is trying to expand the use of the language through the expansion of its overseas Confucius Institutes. But English remains the world’s most important language. America’s superpower status has made it everyone’s favourite second language. This is where its power lies. A Japanese businessman does deals in Sweden in English. A German airline pilot landing in Milan speaks English to the tower. English is also the language of writing intended for an international audience, whether scientific, commercial or literary.

Could Chinese gradually assume this role as the world’s language of communication? I'll venture a prediction: No. Not as long as Chinese is written in traditional Chinese characters.

It’s not terrifyingly hard to learn to speak Chinese. Mandarin has few of the blistering array of case- and verb-endings that make languages like Russian or Arabic so difficult. Sentences are built on a simple system that can seem odd and ungrammatical to outsiders. (Sentences like wo shi zhong guo ren can be translated bit-by-bit as I yes middle country person, meaning “I am Chinese.”) The hardest part for non-Asians is probably mastering the “tones”: “shi” pronounced with a falling pitch means something completely different than “shi” pronounced with a rising, flat or dipping pitch.

But writing is a different story. Normal adult literacy requires a knowledge of about 6,000 characters, which must be memorised to be deciphered. Recurring symbols within characters can offer clues to sound and meaning, but they don't quite clarify the whole. Chinese people take years to learn the basics and many more to comprehend a full range of characters (the biggest dictionaries have more than 60,000 of them). For a foreigner, the task is immense—a mammoth memorisation challenge on top of the ordinary one of learning to speak a foreign tongue, usually undertaken in adulthood, without the benefit of immersion.

There is, of course, an alternative. Chinese can be written with the Roman alphabet (there’s an official system called pinyin), for the benefit of foreigners. Chinese people also use pinyin to enter Chinese characters on a standard computer keyboard. But China has resisted all attempts to simply switch to the alphabet for typical reasons: tradition and nationalism.

So should you teach your kids Chinese? Well, foreign languages are always a good thing to know, and if you really want them to live and work intensively in China, sure. But despite China’s rise, Chinese isn’t the world language of the future; the writing system simply makes it far too hard for the vast majority of the world’s people to use if they care to reach for the widest possible audience. I simply can’t imagine a Dutch physicist in 2110 learning Chinese in order to write up his research, or Finnish musicians recording in Chinese, the language “everybody” knows.

If China switches to an alphabet? That’s a different story.
(Robert Lane Greene is an international correspondent for The Economist and is writing a book about the politics of language around the world. He last wrote for More Intelligent Life about the phrase "beg the question".)

Clash at School Board Meeting 陈学委用学童作工具推孔

Veterans Protest at School Board Meeting(Correspondent Photo by William Hallstrom)

陈凯一语:

用人生观尚未形成的学童作为政治工具、打击政敌以满足个人权欲野心是毛共与所有专制政体惯用的伎俩。 红卫兵在文革中的被用、被欺、被弃就是一例。 陈介飞学委在学委会上用他的共产心态腐蚀、利用、伤害学童以达自己的政治图谋与野心。 此举令人发指。

陈介飞同时用“种族主义”的美左惯用标签攻击反对者们。 但事实是: 我们这些抗议者们有黑人、白人与亚裔人,而支持者们则清一色是亚裔华人(美籍)。 正是陈介飞们在试图混淆理念与族群。 他真的用不着孔学堂去散布共产;他的心态早已在美左教育中共产化了并正用此毒害学童们。

Kai Chen's Words:

Using teenagers in their formative years as political tools to attack one's political opponents, to advance one's political agenda and to satisfy one's political ambition is often applied as a viable/effective scheme in Mao's Cultural Revolution. Red Guards' experience is only one such example. They were deceived, used and abandoned. Many have been irreparably damaged by their own ignorance/stupidity and those in power. Jay Chen (a member of Hacienda School District Board) is employing the same despicable tactic as Mao and the communist regime in China did. The students who are being used, the parents of these students and those who are concerned with the issue of "Confucius Classroom" must be aware of such a scheme and oppose such a communist tactic with vigor.

Jay Chen's attack on the opponents using "racist" label (a increasingly impotent weapon from American left) was so lame and predictable that it bored me to death. He was so blind by his Marxist views that he never saw that the opponents are very racially mixed with blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians while the teenage supporters were all Asian. Confusing ideologies with race and ethnicity is another frequently used communist tactic. I guess Jay Chen does not need "Confucius Classroom" to spread communism. He with his shamelessly using the innocent, distorting the facts and confusing the issues is quite communistic already, maybe contributive to his days of education in Harvard. He is now using his Marxist learning to poison the teenage school kids.


陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

-------------------------------------------------------

Opponents of Confucius Classroom clash with student supporters at Hacienda La Puente board meeting

陈学委用学童作工具推孔


http://www.whittierdailynews.com/ci_15589034

By Maritza Velazquez, Staff Writer
Posted: 07/23/2010 05:50:45 PM PDT

John Kramar (former US Army) and who is against the Chinese classroom program engages in debate with Jeffrey Tso, 16, of Wilson High School. Military veterans and others protest the incorporation of the Confucius Classroom at the Hacienda La Puente Board of Education meeting in Industry on Thursday, July 22, 2010.

Rudy Obad (retired Marine) interrupts the proceedings to make his statement against the Confucius Classroom at the Hacienda La Puente Board of Education meeting.
(SGVN/Correspondent Photo by William Hallstrom/SVCITY)


INDUSTRY - A Hacienda La Puente Unified school board meeting turned contentious Thursday night after opponents of a Chinese government-funded program clashed with student supporters, sparking allegations of racism in the community.
Emotions ran high as critics demanded board members abandon the agreement with the Chinese Language Council International, or Hanban, for the Confucius Classroom at Cedarlane Middle School, claiming it is a means for China to infiltrate America.


"I'm not against learning Chinese, I'm against Communists teaching Communism," said Rudy Obad, a 74-year-old Hacienda Heights resident who served 30 years in the Marine Corps.

High school students presented their own arguments, even holding up "Education" signs showing their support of the Confucius Classroom.

"The phobia and fear we have in this community doesn't mean we shouldn't have this course," Wilson High School junior Jeffrey Tso told the school board, calling critics extremist and irrational.

The issue has been debated since the Chinese language and culture program was approved 4-1 by the school board in February.

At that meeting, the majority vote fostered a deal with Hanban, which will provide $30,000 for the program, including the salary of a Chinese instructional aide, 1,000 textbooks, CDs and other educational materials.

District officials said the funding will allow the expansion of existing language and culture programs despite major cutbacks from the state, giving students a competitive edge in a global job market.

At the meeting Thursday, some accused board members of coercing students to voice their support.

"Do not use these kids. You're damaging them," said Kai Chen, a vocal opponent. "They don't know what they're talking about."


As the students approached the podium to address the school board, several opponents groaned, muttered under their breath and shook their heads in disbelief.

Following public comment, board member Jay Chen spoke of "racist" remarks made by some community members.


"We don't have room for that in our district," he said.

Dani Tucker, president of the district's teachers association, sought to address concerns that a Chinese teacher would be replacing American teachers in the classroom.

State law requires the class be taught by a California credentialed teacher.

"We would be fighting it tooth and nail if a Chinese teacher took an American teacher's job," she said, adding that it's her job to protect those in her union.

The teacher is California credentialed and will adhere to state standards, officials said.

A group of Hacienda La Puente teachers visited Beijing last month to learn more about the Confucius Classroom. The trip was subsidized by the College Board and Hanban, Tucker said.

According to its Web site, Hanban developed the Confucius Institutes in 2004 to promote Chinese language and culture abroad.

In 2009, there were 282 Confucius Institutes established at universities in 88 countries, including programs at UCLA, San Francisco State and San Diego State.

Last year, it was expanded to K-12 schools and there are currently 272 classrooms worldwide.


maritza.1c

626-962-8811, ext. 2718

Read more: Opponents of Confucius Classroom clash with student supporters at Hacienda La Puente board meeting - Whittier Daily News

http://www.whittierdailynews.com/ci_15589034#ixzz0ubiKbq6T

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Has Chinese become the language of corruption? 中文 - 教唆腐败欺骗的语言

陈凯一语:

语言是文化的载体。 腐败虚无的文化自然地产生腐败虚无的语言。 爱滋病人会用爱滋病毒将爱滋病传给所有的人。 这就是语言与文化的关系。

Kai Chen's Words:

Language is only a tool and carrier of certain culture. Corrupt and nihilistic cultures produce corrupt and nihilistic languages. It is just like an AIDS patient using HIV to infect the others with AIDS. This is the relationship between a culture and its language.


陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

Has Chinese become the language of corruption?

中文 - 教唆腐败欺骗的语言


http://opinion.globaltimes.cn/commentary/2010-03/511212.html

Source: Global Times [21:03 March 09 2010] Comments By Lu Yueyang

A: Women de shiqing pa shi zhi bao bu zhu huo a!(Something's come up. I am afraid we can't keep it wrapped.)

B: Shenme zhuang kuang?(What is it?)

A: Gongsi kaishi huaiyi le.(The company's accountant is starting to suspect something.)

B: Yige xiao kuaiji, pa shenme? Gaoding ta hai bu rongyi? Ni ziji kanzheban ba.(A little accountant. What are you afraid of? Taking care of him is no big deal. You figure it out yourself.)
This is not a drama. This is a dialogue my Swedish friend Jojji actually learned in his recent Chinese class.


The "Funny Business" dialogues take place in a typical Chinese office, with familiar characters like "little Zhao" and "Manager Wang" talking about daily business.

But I can't see anything funny in the "Funny Business" lesson. I feel quite ashamed instead. As a person who still considers Chinese to be the most beautiful language in the world, I find it appalling that corruption, foul play or the so-called unspoken rules can be related to a Chinese lesson.

What should I say to my friend? Should I say that it is not true, or that it is true but foreigners are not entitled to know?

They certainly do. People not only learn the language but also the culture behind it; otherwise the effort-requiring process of language learning is totally worthless. It is the access to a new world that rewards and pleases language learners.

But, what kind of world does Chinese learning lead to nowadays? What Chinese learners discover through learning the Chinese language?

English is regarded as the language of modernity, just like French for art and German for philosophy. But when it comes to the Chinese classroom, learners are now studying the language of the account manipulator, the money launderer or even the corrupt official!

I always assumed that my mother tongue would introduce learners to the world of poetry, calligraphy and oriental beauty. How anachronistic I was.

Chinese language learners are now attempting to learn the so-called Chinese wisdom of twisting rules and playing dirty tricks, just like Little Zhao is taught to do in "Funny Business" dialogues. My friend said he found them quite useful and practical when it came to doing business in China.

There is nothing wrong with Chinese learners or the language itself. Usually we are proud to hear that more people are learning Chinese than ever before: Isn't it a sign of our country's rise? There is even a pop song called The whole world is speaking Chinese.

However, can we still be proud, if Chinese language learners find "Funny Business" more useful in China than Confucian aphorisms?

According to the Chinese Language Council International, China has built 282 Confucius Institutes and 241 Confucius Classrooms throughout the world. As billions have been spent, do we have an idea of what we can offer?

What values can we contribute to the world through Chinese learning? "Funny Busi-ness" is by no means the soft power we thought we were putting forward.

Ironically, the Confucian Institute itself isn't entirely blameless. Recent revelations that Hanban, the parent body of the Institutes, spends over 35 million yuan a year on the Institute's main website alone has left the public wondering where all the money is going. The agency might be suffering from a little funny business of its own.

A Shanghai taxi driver said to me years ago, "The foreigner who speaks good Chinese is the worst of all." I was on a business trip then, and came across this metropolitan driver who seemed to have seen a lot of the world.

What he really meant by was, that the foreigner who spoke good Chinese would neither give him tips nor tolerate him taking a long detour.

To be precise, the driver should have said that the foreigner who behaves like a Chinese is the worst of all.

What kind of lessons are we teaching the outside world?


The author is a journalist who is now studying at the University of Hong Kong. maggielu@ gmail. com

Blowing China’s cover in Canada 中共腐蚀西方的惯用伎俩

陈凯一语:

中共官方付钱的免费旅游、宴会、款待、女人、贸易关系贿赂、地位显赫、等等是中共党奴朝腐蚀控制西方、美国政界、学界、媒体界、贸易界人士们的有效手段。 今天西方、美国对中共的绥靖就是这个有效的腐败手段的结果。 中共党奴朝已在相当程度上利用了人性中的原弊与弱点赢得了这场道德精神战。

Kai Chen's Words:

Free China trips, free banquets, free hotels, bribery, women, status symbols, official connections to businessmen, etc.., are the common yet very effective measures employed by the Chinese communist regime to corrupt Western and American politicians, academia, media and investors.... Today the spineless "appeasement" adopted by most Western countries toward China is the result of such Chinese effective use of human vices and weaknesses. The communist regime is winning so far in this front.


陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

Blowing China’s cover in Canada

中共腐蚀西方的惯用伎俩


http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/835038--cohn-blowing-china-s-cover-in-canada

Published On Tue Jul 13 2010

By Martin Regg Cohn

Columnist A red under every bed? Look again — under that banquet table, or that free business class seat to China.

You’ll find Chinese stagecraft at work, even if it’s not as sinister as the spooks want you to believe.

Spying is a dirty business. But spook optics are also proving messy for the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, whose candour has come back to haunt him.

Let’s analyze some of the raw intelligence coming out of Ottawa since our chief spy, Richard Fadden, blurted out that Canadian politicians are coming under Chinese influence. While the cries of protest are still red hot across Canada, in Red China the guffaws from incredulous Commie spymasters are even louder.

They can hardly believe their luck. After years of public exposure and excoriation by Canadian spy chiefs at parliamentary hearings, the Chinese caught a lucky break this time.

Fadden’s blabbing sparked a torrent of domestic criticism that has completely overshadowed the mundane reality of how spooks operate in the shadows. It may also have overstated the true worth of cloak-and-dagger operations, while understating the less glamorous methods of influence-peddling in this country.

Fadden clearly struck a nerve. I can understand the sensitivities of some Chinese Canadian politicians — and their defenders — who felt their loyalties, as a group, were unfairly questioned.

But there’s no point being boy scouts about this. As an open society, perched beside the United States, Canada is a tempting target.

Forget the stagecraft of spy novels, or the make-believe machinations of those captured Russian sleeper agents. China targets Canadians with more mundane tactics ranging from sumptuous free lunches to package tours of China. Last month, a so-called “opinion leader” told me excitedly that he’d been invited on a tour of China. MPs go all the time. So do freelance journalists. All on China’s dime.

Call it soft power. But spying can be a deadly serious business when it tars entire communities. The canard of “dual loyalties” has dogged Canadians of Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Jewish descent over the years — with many innocent citizens unjustly detained in wartime.

It’s a mistake to single out diasporas. While the Chinese and other governments shamelessly target émigré groups to aid the motherland, they spend at least as much time and money trying to win over the “landed gentry” — the white folks who make up the Canadian establishment going back generations.

Note that Fadden didn’t fret about the targeted politicians being Chinese Canadians. He merely noted that some unnamed politicians were falling under Chinese influence — which could well mean white guys in suits.

Still, no one should be under any illusions about how Beijing targets so-called overseas Chinese through the United Front Work Department of the Communist party.

“In the case of Canada, China has used United Front tactics to try to win the hearts and minds of the people through various means, such as the establishment of the Confucius Institute, the propagation of Chinese culture and other non-political methods,” says University of Waterloo political scientist Sonny Lo. That includes “making friends with MPs, Canadian citizens and officials.”

When it comes to Falun Gong, China’s tactics get rougher. When Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin defected in Sydney five years ago, he disclosed that roughly 1,000 agents (and informants) were spying on Falun Gong activists in both Australia and Canada.

Former CSIS head Jim Judd showed typically Canadian reticence at a 2007 Senate committee hearing, saying, “I do not want to be politically incorrect, so I will not name specific countries.” Told to stop being coy, Judd conceded that China takes up half of the agency’s resources.

China gets all the attention, but Judd noted that more than a dozen countries give Canada trouble. Taiwan competes ferociously with the mainland, often using similar tactics. Don’t forget India, whose activities in Canada are also on the public record. And the Russians, with their fondness for Canadian passports, are no strangers to the field.

Amidst the torrent of bad news Fadden unleashed, the good news is that it may force us to think about how China gets its way in Canada — not just with underhanded operations but above board activities such as buying up big chunks of Canada’s resource giants in the oilsands. That’s where the real influence is likely to be found in future.

A red under every bed? Look again — under the boardroom table.


Martin Regg Cohn writes Tuesday.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

China shows military strength ahead of US drill 中共抗美助朝军演

陈凯一语:

当泛伊斯兰主义与中共党奴朝早把美国作为死敌的时候,美国的人们与政界却用“政治正确”拒绝承认这些威胁。 当人们与奥巴马当局不提“恐怖”的时候,他们也回避“共产”。

Kai Chen's Words:

What bugs me most is that America is burying her head in the sand: When the Islamists and Chinese communists take America as their mortal enemy and focus their policies to weaken and destroy America, many in America under the mis-guidance/mis-direction of Obama regime are using "political correctness" to deny the existence of these threats. As a result, the Islamists are not "terrorists" and the Chinese are not "communists" in our modern language and vocabulary.


----------------------------------------------------

陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

China shows military strength ahead of US drill

中共抗美助朝军演


http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-50252920100720

By Ben Blanchard and Emma Graham-Harrison

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has shown off its growing military strength with naval exercises off its eastern coast, shortly before Washington and Seoul are expected to carry out their own drills which Beijing has criticised.

State television broadcast images on Tuesday it said showed the East Sea Fleet on recent manoeuvres, including helicopters and a submarine launching a long-range missile underwater.

It did not say exactly where or when the pictures were taken and it was not clear if they showed a drill that the official Xinhua news agency said took place over the weekend.

Xinhua said four rescue helicopters and four rescue ships were deployed in the two-day drill in the Yellow Sea, where the United States and South Korea are planning manoeuvres aimed at sending a message of deterrence to North Korea.

Beijing has condemned those drills, which many in China feel are also aimed at their country.


Zhu Chenghu, a strategic studies professor at the National Defence University, told the China News Service that the U.S.-South Korean drills were clearly aimed at sending Beijing a message as much as they were directed at North Korea.

"They will take place in the Yellow Sea, which is the entry point to China's house, and they obviously want to show off their military strength," he said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates dismissed concerns on Tuesday, saying the drills were routine.

Neither Xinhua nor state television mentioned the U.S.-South Korean exercises. But the official China Daily quoted experts downplaying the Chinese drill, which started on Saturday.

"The nature of the drill is very different from that of the US-ROK joint military action," Beijing-based military analyst Peng Guangqian was quoted saying.

China's exercises rehearsed how to defend against long-distance attacks, as well as exploring ways to integrate troops and civilians to tackle emergencies, Xinhua said.

Tensions in the Korean Peninsula have risen since the sinking in March of a South Korean warship killed 46 sailors. An investigation launched by Seoul but including international experts concluded a North Korean torpedo had hit the ship.

North Korea has denied responsibility and long-time ally China has not accepted the findings of the investigation.

China has repeatedly criticised the U.S.-South Korean drills.

"We resolutely oppose any activities in the Yellow Sea that may threaten China's security," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang told a routine news conference last Thursday.

China's growing military clout and rising defence spending have raised concern in Asia, especially in Japan.

Taiwan, the self-ruled island China claims as its own, warned this week that its huge neighbour was still aiming missiles at it, despite warming business and trade ties.


(Additional reporting by Huang Yan, editing by Andrew Marshall)

(For more news on Reuters India, click in.reuters.com)

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Confucius Institutes: Getting Schooled by Beijing 孔子学院--北京的洗脑术

Confucius Institutes: Getting Schooled by Beijing

孔子学院--北京的洗脑术

Spymaster Fadden warns Confucius Institutes aim to teach more than language: Chinese regime uses academic institutes to expand its soft power.


By Matthew Little July 16, 2010

TORONTO—When Chinese authorities sent in paramilitary troops to quash Tibetan unrest just months before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, one University of Waterloo instructor rallied her students to “work together to fight with Canadian media” who reported the regime’s heavy-handed tactics.

Yan Li, a former reporter with the Chinese Communist Party’s official Xinhua News Agency, recounted her efforts to confront media sympathy with “Tibetan separatists” in an article posted on a website serving Chinese literature scholars in North America called Wenxinshe.

Yan used class time to explain “the history of Tibet and its current situation,” showing students a map with Tibet clearly inside China.

“Under her influence, some Canadian students bravely debated with anti-China elements on the Internet, some wrote to television stations and newspapers to point out that their reporting was not according to the facts,” the article said.

Eventually, one major Canadian television station even apologized as a result of the “combined efforts” of Yan and her students.

And none of this would have been possible without Beijing’s efforts to establish Confucius Institutes, such as the one Yan directs at the University of Waterloo.

Ms. Yan explained.

“What deeply touched me was that though the state still has many areas still needing urgent improvement, they invest such a huge amount of money abroad to establish Confucius Institutes one by one,” Ms. Yan was quoted. “From a strategic perspective, perhaps this is a necessary part of the long-term plan, to gain the world’s understanding and friendship as China is rising again.”

It’s a huge investment indeed. The BBC reported in 2006 that the Chinese regime had set aside US$10 billion to establish the first 100 Confucius Institutes by this year. Then the plan grew. According to Xinhua, there are 316 Confucius Institutes in 94 countries and regions as of this month, with more on the way.

Soft Power 101

The schools are part of a broader effort by the regime to extend “soft power” via culture and education. When visiting Chinese leader Hu Jintao met with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa last month, the two came away announcing plans for a Chinese-funded cultural centre in Canada, and plans for Beijing to host 100 Canadian education officials and principals, and 100 middle school students on visits.

But the growth of the Confucius Institutes concerns those who monitor Chinese efforts to exert influence in Canada.

Besides his explosive comments that some Canadian politicians could be under foreign influence, CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) Director Richard Fadden also exposed the danger posed by the quiet expansion of Confucius Institutes in Canadian post-secondary schools.

While the Chinese regime promotes the institutes as a place to learn Chinese language and culture, they are commonly seen as part of Beijing’s efforts to expand its soft power and non-military influence. Critics of the institutes allege they are propaganda entities that can interfere with the academic independence of the universities they are often attached to.

Speaking to an audience of police, military and intelligence personnel at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in March, Fadden said the institutes are controlled by Chinese embassies and consulates. He lumped them together with some of Bejing’s other efforts to steer Canadian China policy.

Evidence was on display during Hu's visit to Canada in June when a crowd of hundreds gathered on Parliament Hill in Ottawa to both welcome Hu and shout down protesters concerned with human-rights abuses in China. In the crowd were a group wearing T-shirts with labels identifying them as being from Montreal's Confucius Institute, which is hosted at Dawson College.

The recording of a speech at the Chinese embassy obtained by The Epoch Times showed the rally was funded and organized by the embassy with the intent of waging "war" with protesters. Several groups have now called for the expulsion of Mr. Liu Shaohua, the embassy official caught on tape.

The Chinese regime doesn’t deny the role that Confucius Institutes have in building influence overseas. Li Changchun, the Chinese Communist Party's Propaganda Chief and fifth-highest ranking member of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee, calls the institutes “an important part of China's overseas propaganda set-up.”

Canada is host to seven Confucius Institutes, four of them attached to post-secondary schools including McMaster University and the British Columbia Institute of Technology. They offer Chinese language and cultural classes, sometimes with course credit in degree programs.

Trouble in the Schoolyard

It is not the language classes that raise concerns so much as the institute’s intentions and extra-curricular activities. Over the years, those activities have included getting universities to shut down events put on by groups Beijing doesn’t like and pushing students to protest western media’s coverage of China.

In 2006, one faculty member at Stockholm University’s institute tried to stop the school’s Asia Pacific studies department from having Erping Zhang as a visiting scholar because of his volunteer work for the U.S.-based Falun Dafa Information Center. An email from that professor was sent to the university’s faculty alleging Zhang was not a scholar, despite having five degrees including a Master's in International Affairs from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

In Israel, a judge ruled Tel Aviv University had bowed to the Chinese regime by shutting down an art exhibition about the oppression of Falun Gong in China put on by students because the school feared losing perks provided by the Chinese regime, including a Confucius Institute.

As the University of Sydney closed a deal to have its own Confucius Institute in 2007, Jocelyn Chey, a former diplomat and visiting professor there told the Australian that having the institute on campus was going to make it difficult for academics to maintain their freedom and independence.

The University of Pennsylvania never applied to host an institute over concerns the regime would try to meddle with its curriculum while the University of British Columbia declined an offer to host one.

Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo, says there is no doubt the institutes are part of the Chinese regime’s soft-power campaign, but that doesn’t necessarily make them subversive in nature, just unusual to Westerners.

He says that controversial activities associated with the institutes are unintended consequences of their close alignment with Beijing.

Working under the Ministry of Education as part of China’s united front efforts to enlist non-communist supporters to its side, the institutes educate students to become sympathetic to official Chinese-state views, said Lo.

“In the long run, the cultural impact and the hidden diplomatic and political impact of Confucius Institutes will be tremendous. It is a long term strategy,” he added.

He said key personnel for the institutes will be recommended by the Chinese Ministry of Education in China so “definitely their thinking tends to be political acceptable to mainland Chinese government.”

Others see the influence as less benign. Writing for Washington, D.C.-based democracy monitor Freedom House last year, sinologist Perry Link and journalist Joshua Kurlantzick included the Confucius Institutes as one of the means Beijing uses to undermine democracy, describing them as "authoritarian soft power."

"The United States and other democracies need to be more aware of the workings of the CCP’s soft-power initiatives around the world, and particularly the ways in which they protect and promote authoritarian rule," the two authors wrote.

Subversive or not, the explosive growth of the institutes has worried not only CSIS, but the U.S. Congress as well.

U.S. concerns

In its 2008 report to Congress, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted China’s Central Propaganda Department controlled the media, internet and cultural and education institutions to make sure everyone stays in tune with the regime’s perspective. That control applies to the Ministry of Education that oversees the spread of Confucius institutes around the world.

“The propaganda system’s central purpose is to perpetuate the political authority of the Chinese Communist Party by concealing negative information about the party and its history and by propagating narratives intended to bolster the party’s authoritarian rule,” said the report.

In 2009, the commission’s report noted how the regime was working to shape the opinions of China in elite policy-making circles by influencing the commentary coming out of U.S. academics and think tanks.

“This takes the form of providing both positive rewards to ‘friendly’ scholar—such as preferred access to interviews and documents—as well as taking punitive actions such as denying visas for academics who anger Beijing. These rewards and punishments offer the Chinese government leverage over the careers of foreign scholars and thereby encourage a culture of academic self-censorship.”

The long-term impacts of that and the role of Confucius Institutes is mentioned in a paper published by the same commission titled China’s Use of Perception Management and Strategic Deception.

"Developments over the last ten years strongly suggest Beijing has come to understand and practice strategic communication—getting the right message to the right audience through the right medium at the right time. The breadth of this effort is indicative of a global campaign intended to paint China in the hues Beijing selects, not those imposed by external critics."

The same paper's mention of the regime's US$6.5billion plan to start an English-language news network to rival CNN or the BBC and give Beijing's take on current events.

The paper notes that the U.S. State Department’s International Security Advisory Board is concerned that China is in the midst of a comprehensive strategic deception campaign.

It also details China’s plans to open 1,000 institutes around the world by 2020. Half of those are expected to have opened by this year.

Universities are attracted to the institutes by the offer of free teaching staff supplied by Beijing, and in some cases, kickbacks from the regime.

Lessons in propaganda

Last month, Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., announced its own institute and over $150,000 in startup cash and up to $100,000 in annual project funds provided by the regime.

But such funding comes with a catch, and could give the regime leverage over the school, say critics.

For example, Brock could find itself in the position of hosting a forum to deny the widely reported human rights abuses in Tibet.

That happened last year when Minister Xie Feng, Deputy Chief of the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C., told delegates at an event at the Confucius Institute at the University of Maryland about how China freed Tibet from slavery. He went on to refute and attack claims of abuses made by human rights groups.

“The freedom of religious belief and normal religious activities of the Tibetan people are protected,” he said, failing to mention that carrying a picture of the Dalai Lama is a crime or that monks regularly protest religious persecution.

“Tremendous changes have taken place in Tibet over the past 50 years. Tibet has progressed from darkness to brightness, from poverty to prosperity, from autocracy to democracy, and from self-seclusion to opening up. The problem between us and Dalai Group is not over ethnic, religious or human rights issues, nor is it over whether autonomy is needed. Rather, it has always been a struggle between progress and retrogression.”

That’s what Beijing would have us believe. Now they’re getting their chance.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Strangers at Home/a Chinese Dilemma 中国人的人鬼两重心态

陈凯一语:

我在“人鬼谈”一文中就此命题(中国人的“人鬼两重性”与“无方向的陀螺被鞭笞旋转”的特性)有过分析性论述。 (http://www.kaichenforum.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3291&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=)这篇文章只是与我以前的观察与分析不谋而合。 但其观点仍需被所有中文系统的人们重温。

Kai Chen's Words:

I have written on this subject of "Being Human or/and Being Zombie" before extensively. But revisiting this subject by another scholar is still worthwhile.


-------------------------------------------------------

陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

Strangers at Home/a Chinese Dilemma

中国人的人鬼两重心态


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704682604575369390660095122.html

Chinese living abroad have played a huge role in the country's economic miracle. But back in China, they are both welcome and vulnerable..

Seamus Murphy/VII Network for The Wall Street Journal


Chinese and Angolan workers in Luanda, Angola, in March.
.The people that the Chinese are often most worried about are other Chinese.


Chinese living and working abroad have played an enormous role in the country's economic boom. For years, they have sent money back and offered hope to those at home during periods of calamity and chaos.

($48 Billion - Money sent by overseas workers back home to China in 2009. Source: World Bank)

Yet holding a foreign passport doesn't make these expatriates any less Chinese. Of all people, they are expected to be most attuned to the complex realities of life in China. When they fall short, they are treated with official suspicion and individual disdain.

When I first studied in Beijing in 1974 I had a Canadian classmate who was classified as a "Patriotic Overseas Chinese." The status afforded her special access to people and her ethnicity meant that otherwise distant Chinese students embraced her. She always made the point that her background gave her insights into China and its revolution, things beyond the ken of Caucasians like me.

"You simply don't understand China's unique national conditions." This common refrain is still chimed with certainty, and stridency, by average citizens, just as leaders of the party-state employ it when addressing foreigners. Unless you appreciate, and accept unequivocally, China's "unique national conditions" you betray yourself as lacking insight into and empathy with the mysteries of that country's tortured history and complex present realities.

This kind of talk allows for a kind of "Chinese exceptionalism."- (Human zombie mentality) People employ it whether they are rejecting well-intentioned observations on social mores or staring down the incredulity of outsiders confronted by egregious political and mercantile behavior. Not only can the criticism of outsiders be deflected in this fashion, even those with intimate ties to the country are frequently derided for failing to appreciate China's conditions. Sometimes, individuals are taught a lesson about the country's peculiarities by means of a long stint in jail.

In the past few months there have been two cases of Chinese insiders who have been tried and jailed in murky circumstances. The Australian businessman Stern Hu was sentenced in March, accused of taking bribes, and earlier this month the U.S. citizen and geologist Xue Feng, reportedly tortured during a long pre-trial ordeal, was jailed for eight years on charges of espionage. Both men were involved in the resources industry and there is speculation that the severity of their sentences reflects the sensitivities of the Chinese in all matters related to resource security. However, it was presumed that both Messrs. Hu and Xue might have been treated more leniently because they are foreign nationals who were offered open consular support by their adoptive countries.

Both men are members of China's new-era globalized citizens. They are post-modern overseas Chinese. That is, like many previous generations of Chinese, for reasons of family, fate or personal fortune they sought a life outside the country of their birth. However, due to the economic boom of recent years and the extraordinary opportunities it has offered, they choose to work for foreign companies back in China.

The Chinese Diaspora - The 20 countries with the largest ethnic Chinese populations, born inside or outside of China, in 2005.

Historically, overseas Chinese have been men and women who although identifying as Chinese, or only even partially Chinese, elect to reside primarily overseas. In recent years, however, the category of sojourning Chinese has broadened to incorporate those former citizens of the People's Republic who went overseas in search of a better education, jobs and lifestyle. Presuming that their foreign passports and international connections provide them with a measure of protection, they shuttle freely between China and global commercial centers, partaking in the migratory existence of the international business elite. They can maintain a pride in China while enjoying the benefits of being foreign citizens.

A diaspora of overseas Chinese developed during the 19th century as the Qing Empire went into economic and social decline. Since then generations of Chinese have contributed to societies and cultures all over the world. They became important members of communities throughout Southeast Asia, North America, Australia and the Pacific long before modern China found a role for them.

Families and communities might benefit from those connections, but in a world in which local clan ties and narrow loyalties were paramount, the sojourners were frequently derided for being "pseudo-foreign Devils," tainted by the untoward manners and ideas of foreign climes.

During China's reform era starting in 1978, and in particular in the past two decades, countless overseas Chinese have been playing a crucial role in China's economic reform. They have also contributed in a myriad of ways to the integration of their homeland in the global economy. To be Chinese by birth, or even to enjoy Chinese ancestry, there is an all-too-often stated expectation that you understand the overt rules as well as the unspoken codes of your native land. Intuitively you are supposed to understand and be vigilant about China's particular situation and conditions.

(Australian businessman Stern Hu, above, and U.S. citizen and geologist Xue Feng, below, were both recently tried and jailed in China.)

When things go well and there are opportunities to be grasped, the overseas Chinese, with their inside-track appreciation of the distinctive modus operandi in the People's Republic, ride high. When the complex nexus of national interest, party-family ties, local power brokers and influence peddlers is antagonized, however, these intuitive insiders, the commercial compradors with local knowledge, are particularly vulnerable. The protective sheath of foreign citizenship proves to be little more than a gossamer.

Some Chinese were studying overseas during the heady months of the mass protest movement of 1989, and large numbers decided to keep away following the brutal repression of June 4. It seemed as though the economic and social changes allowed by the Communist Party until then would be stalled. Eventually, the economic reforms continued and transformed the country in unexpected ways, but the lessons of 1989 were not lost on China's leaders. They instituted a vast educational and media campaign to instruct young and old alike in China's unique realities.

Those conditions, hard to define at the best of times, include an official menu of factoids and attitudes: China has an unbroken recorded history of 5,000 years; it is a multi-ethnic nation incorporating peoples as varied as the Han, Tibetans, Uighurs and Dai; historical necessity and contemporary realities determine that only the unified leadership of the Chinese Communist Party can maintain stability and pursue China's unique path to modernity ensuring economic prosperity for all. It also includes such nebulous claims that there is a particular "Chinese" way of doing things, that Chinese people have a unique purchase on the world of the spirit, and that although China is a global culture only Chinese can really understand it.

Saturating textbooks, films, TV programs and the news media, awareness has become part of the fabric of contemporary Chinese life and thought. The success of the two-decade-long campaign is evident, for example, in the patriotic demagoguery of the Chinese Internet, as well as in everyday nationalistic fervor. Chinese living overseas as well as foreign Chinese working in China are equally expected to get with the program.

Nonetheless, overseas Chinese will remain profoundly enmeshed in the story of China in the 21st century. The fate of individuals like Stern Hu and Xue Feng elicit comment and concern, but on a far greater scale new populations in Africa and Latin America, as well as throughout the Pacific and in towns and cities in Europe and Russia, will provide other dimensions to the global Chinese presence. In turn complex new dynamics are developing, not only for foreign communities, but for China itself.

It is here that the Chinese party-state's treatment of individual figures like Messrs. Hu and Xue is instructive. Following the detention of each of these individuals their cases remained shrouded in secrecy, their treatment at times arbitrary and cruel. Falling victim to Chinese-style due process their families, as well as the diplomatic representatives of their new countries, were aghast and dismayed. If the Chinese authorities were using the jailing and sentencing of these two men to offer a cautionary tale, the lessons they broadcast not only to the world, but to the broader overseas Chinese community, are profoundly disturbing.

While many commentators have remarked on the revived and invented traditions popular in China today, it was in the early years of the Republic of China in the 1910s and '20s that the modern transposition of traditional ethical and moral categories began. Along with more benign values such as "humanness" and "rightness," the concept of "loyalty" was instilled with a new meaning. Fealty to the ruling monarch was replaced with loyalty to the state and the nation.

Lao Chen, the protagonist in the controversial 2009 novel "In an Age of Prosperity: China 2013" by Chan Koon-chung (also known as "The Gilded Age" in English), is a Hong Kong resident of Beijing. He lives in a near-future utopia. The year is 2013 and China is the dominant economic power in the world, the society is stable and its citizens enjoy boundless consumer wealth. Harmony, the one-word slogan promoted by Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, reigns supreme. So what if the ever-vigilant and paternalistic government exacts a heavy price for social order and individual quiescence?

But Lao Chen senses something is wrong. He knows people are happy enough with "90% freedom," but he wonders what is really missing. There is an inexplicable gap in everyone's memories, a lost month, and vagueness surrounds it. It is as though the society itself has been anaesthetized. Smug satisfaction disguises an unmistakable putrescence. Whenever he voices his unease, Lao Chen comes up against a brick wall. People tell him that, despite his long years in Beijing, he still doesn't understand China's realities.

Surely the situation cannot continue in this political stasis for long? Political reform, a government more open to oversight and criticism, a free media and independent judiciary—perhaps these are all part of the next stage in the Chinese story? But such hopes fly in the face of China's "unique national conditions." Late in the novel a 40-page justification for the repressive harmony of China today is offered by a fictional Politburo member, He Dongsheng. To quote Linda Jaivin's translation of a passage from He's speech:

"Let's just keep the situation as is; after another 20 years of stable development we can reopen the discussion about reform. For the moment, at most, we could try to reform a few things here and there, as part of a gradual move towards benevolent government… Political reform? Is it that simple? In the end, you'll emerge from the transition, not with the commonwealth you desire, not the European style of social democracy or the American style of a free, democratic constitutional government, but rather a Chinese-style fascist dictatorship that's a compendium of nationalism, cultural traditionalism, patriotism and national racial purity."

The book's author, Mr. Chan, is a publisher from Hong Kong who has been living in Beijing since the 1990s. He has knowingly created a fictional account of Chinese reality. In discussing his work Mr. Chan has observed that dealing with China today demands a talent similar to that of the famous Tang-dynasty singer Jiang Shu. She was an artist who could sing two songs at once: one in the back of her throat and the other through her nose. "Two-song Jiang Shu" lived over a millennium ago, but today her talent enmeshes Chinese people, regardless of what passport they happen to hold.

The Chinese authorities claim a monopoly right to define and interpret the nation's unique conditions. In reality, social change, evolving attitudes and widespread aspirations continue to challenge the status quo. Mao Zedong honed his revolutionary instincts on Chinese soil rather than studying overseas, yet it was his foreign-education colleagues who were directly responsible for the opening up and reform of China that is changing the world.

—Geremie R. Barmé is a historian and the director of the Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University, Canberra.