Jottings from the Granite Studio

“The world saw men of prescience with far-reaching vision, and the reason for [these men] not showing deep loyalty by helping to correct the evils of government lay in the state’s excesses in proscribing contrary opinions. Often before upright words could even be uttered, the body had met death. Thoughtful people…would only listen and incline their ears, standing with one foot on the other, not daring to offer their services while keeping their mouths shut in silence. The three [leaders] lost the proper way while loyal officials offered no remonstrance and advisers no plans. With the realm in chaos and unworthy officials not reporting their troubles to their superiors, was this not a tragedy?”

Any guess as to when this was written? 1989? Democracy Wall? May 4th Movement? Last week? Nope…It was written by the Han dynasty poet and official Jia Yi (201-168 B.C.E) and is part of a larger essay called “The Faults of Qin” (過秦論) describing the sudden demise of the Qin dynasty in 207 B.C.E. Despite their age, Jia Yi’s words could have come from a Nanfang Zhoumo issue on corruption in China’s media today. For that matter, they wouldn’t sound out of place in a New Yorker piece reporting on the the “loyal officials” in the Bush administration who continue to confuse patriotism with blind faith in a deeply flawed plan.

Is criticism of the government a culturally-specific value? Certainly the Chinese government would have you think so. “China” has undergone many different permutations in the past couple millennia, but one common thread has been an acute sensitivity to criticism by those at the very top. China’s history is littered with officials exiled or worse, purges of scholarly factions, books banned or burned, and literary inquisitions of all stripes. Jia Yi was having his own problems at the (relatively new) Han court when he wrote the lines above.

And yet this has never stopped brave men (and some women) from standing up and voicing dissent even when doing so sometimes meant paying a steep price: Hai Rui. Qiu Jin. Tan Sitong. Sima Qian. Li Dazhao. Yue Fei. Peng Dehuai. Wei Jingsheng. The students of June 4. There are more and I’d check Wikipedia for others, but I’m in China right now and the site is currently being blocked. (ahem)

I am not a starry-(and striped)-eyed exceptionalist wishing to import American-style democracy wholesale as the cure-all for China’s ills, but it is hard to believe that an independent media and the ability of China’s people to speak freely about the the problems that affect them personally would make worse the grave issues of environmental degradation, endemic corruption, and the unequal distribution of the benefits from the Chinese economic miracle. So much has been accomplished in the past quarter century, is it possible that the CCP can shake off the yoke of history and develop the confidence to open up their authority to the criticism of those they rule? Let us hope so.
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* The Faults of the Qin, translated by Daniel W.Y. Kwok in Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume I, 2nd edition. Compiled by Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 231.