Tucked away in clubs and meeting rooms in cities around the world, small groups of Chinese expatriates came together last month to recognise the four-year anniversary of the editorial series Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.
Ranked among the most banned books in China today, the document published both in Da Ji Yuan, (Chinese Epoch Times) and translated for the English Epoch Times, has spread through China, from man to man and house to house, inspiring Chinese people in their droves to renounce the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
An exposé of the CCP’s rule in China, Nine Commentaries, also known as the 9 Ping, outlines in vivid detail the CCP’s evolving efforts to dominate the hearts and minds of Chinese people through whatever means it takes, including murder, deception and bribery.
At an anniversary forum in Flushing, New York, Chairman of the Global Service Centre for Quitting the CCP Professor Dayong Li described the Nine Commentaries as nine spiritual atomic bombs. In its exposé of the CCP, Chinese people were realising how they had been duped, he said, and were denouncing the CCP, its Communist Youth League and its Young Pioneers in massive numbers.
He noted that since the opening of the Global Service Centre for Quitting the CCP in 2005, the number of withdrawal declarations registered had surpassed 45 million.
Speaking via video at the forum, internationally recognised pro-democracy activist Wei Jingsheng described the Nine Commentaries as “educational”. Now that Chinese people were able to fully understand the nature of the Chinese regime, he said, they would no longer pin their hopes on it. The CCP were like rats on a sinking ship, he continued, noting that when members of the Party itself start to denounce it and when officials start to deploy their resources and relatives overseas, it was easy to see that the vessel was going to sink.
Wei Jinsheng, now a US citizen, was arrested in Beijing in 1978 for posting a document calling for democracy in China. His subsequent court trials were the subject of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s university thesis.
Included among the high profile speakers at the Flushing forum were others who shared more humble understandings. Ms LiPing Zhao said that her family had been members of the Red Army, but after reading the Nine Commentaries, she had been so moved that she had quit the CCP using her true name and joined a team of volunteers to help others quit.
Sydney forum
In Sydney, an anniversary forum was held with a live broadcast and two-way connection into China. Huddled around a computer on the ground floor of an inner city club, a number of speakers and over 40 supporters shared their concerns about China, answering questions from over 200 receivers within China.
Among the speakers were Chinese law specialist Professor Yuan Hong Bin, China expert Dr Chen Hong-Xin, democracy advocates Feng Hai-Huang and Yang Jun, and 9 Ping advocate Li Yuan-Hai.
Professor Yuan elaborated on a number of concerns relevant to China today. Chinese communism, he said, had originated in Russia and this relationship had seen the CCP betray Chinese people, giving away a territory of 1.5 million square kilometres to Russia.
Betrayal and corruption were, in fact, widespread, he said, with over 90 per cent of divisional cadres using overseas bank accounts to store their embezzled wealth in friends’ or relatives’ names.
Professor Yuan said it was important to note that increasing reports of riots within China were not violent actions by unruly villages as reported by CCP media, but legitimate actions by villagers frustrated by the illegal seizure of land by corrupt officials and the inability to access justice through the legal process.
Economic decline, rising unemployment, the persecution of Falun Gong, corruption and repression were all factors that contributed to the increasing awareness raised by the 9 ping of CCP failures, he said. There was no chance of political reform; the CCP had lost the trust of its people.
Dr Chen Hong Xing said the unemployment rate in Mainland China numbered in the millions, with businesses crumpling in the Pearl River Delta, Guangdong and Shenzhen, as well as in the Yangtze River Delta. The 9 Ping, she believed, would ensure a peaceful transition from the massive problems created by the entrenched dictatorship to a democratic country ruled by law.
Discussion points raised by listeners within China included the melamine milk scandal, the execution of police killer Yang Jia without a fair trial, the failure to address concerns surrounding the Sichuan earthquake and the means by which a peaceful transition to democracy would occur.
Contributors Ming Guo, Matthew Little, Jenny Settle
The Nine Commentaries is available in book form from The Epoch Times office in Hurstville and select bookstores.
