This post is a response to two essays written this past weekend. One on the blog Froogville that in turn sparked a response from Richard at The Peking Duck. Below are my own thoughts, which began as a comment on TPD but ran long and so I’ve decided to post them here.
I don’t think that fenqing can be defined by a particular perspective or viewpoint. Certainly adopting the CCP or Han nationalist worldview doesn’t make one a fenqing. Furthermore, it is far too simplistic to say that just because somebody accepts the CCP worldview on a set of issues this means they are “indoctrinated” or “brainwashed.” But I would suggest that fenqing do share some traits in common with the CCP. The CCP’s information/education environment is not only mono-message but actively hostile to dissenting perspectives. Likewise, for me, the defining characteristic of a fenqing is not strong belief in a particular view, but rather an inability to accept that other valid perspectives might exist.
As with the CCP, a common strategy is to attack the speaker/writer rather than address an argument. For the party, witness the continuing ham-handed attempts to paint the Dalai Lama as a “jackal in monk’s