VANCOUVER, Canada—With the approach of the 60th anniversary of the Chinese regime on Oct. 1, China experts gathered on Sunday in a forum in Vancouver, Canada to dissect and review the reign of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its effect.
Chinese Regime Twists Chinese People's Dignity
“A spectacle is occurring in today’s world,” said Sheng Xue, a renowned Chinese-Canadian author, news critic, and journalist.
“Chinese people find all kinds of ways—studying abroad, going on business trips, or visiting families and friends—to stay in countries such as United States, Canada, Australia, and Germany. Yet once they are in these countries, they again bolster the despotic Chinese regime.”
Such an odd, but common phenomenon is a result of a twisted mindset implemented by the regime, said Sheng. After various political persecutions and movements incited by the CCP, a Chinese person has to be a victim, a perpetrator, or a witness.
“Nobody has been left out in the 60 years of history,” said Sheng, a native of Beijing presently residing in Edmonton, Canada. “So these people today need to ask themselves, ‘After seeing all these persecutions, after witnessing my acquaintances being persecuted and harmed, how can I possibly smile, happily wave the red communist flag, and pay tribute to the regime that has persecuted me or those that I know?’”
Sheng explained that it is an aftereffect of the CCP’s despotism: Chinese people have lost their ability to judge.
Prior to the CCP era, Chinese people had values that shaped their actions and kept society upright, said Sheng, recipient of the Canadian Association of Journalists Award for Investigative Journalism and the National Magazine Award.
“But after 1949, a fundamental change occurred, namely Chinese people no longer can protect their personal dignity. ... The series of political movements—the ‘Three Antis and Five Antis’ movement, the anti-rightist movement, and the Cultural Revolution—all target Chinese people’s dignity, self-respect, and spirit. After all these that have occurred, Chinese people were forced to give up their dignity in order to live.
“It blocks every possibility of you becoming a good person. That’s why nowadays, you can just go on any Web sites that are not official to the Chinese regime, and you would see new reports of crimes, abductions, and murders almost every minute.
“That is why I often say modern China has become the least suitable place for civilized people to live in human history,” said Sheng, who has been chosen as the PEN Canada City of Edmonton Writer in Exile for 2009–10.
Sheng said that Chinese people also deserve to enjoy the values that everyone else in the world universally agrees upon, such as democracy, freedom, rule of law, and human rights.
Regime Misleads Western Perception of China
Attorney Clive Ansley, who has practiced law since 1983, said that Westerners need to recognize the success of the CCP and its “barbarian management” in order to prevent all of us from eventually living under the CCP.
“The Chinese Communist Party is extremely skilled in seducing influential Westerners,” said Ansley, who has studied China-Canada relations for 40 years and is fluent in speaking and reading Chinese.
“Politicians are seduced by the Chinese government, invited on trips and tours, wined, and dined. The last two [Canadian] prime ministers, before this one, as you probably know, were totally owned by China.”
Ansley, who opened the first foreigner’s law firm in China during his 14-year stay in Shanghai, said that the Chinese regime has established a relationship with the judicial council of Canada, resulting in some “very gullible” Canadian judges going on banquet tours to China.
“They come home as wildly enthusiastic ambassadors for China, overflowing with misinformation and childish enthusiasm,” said Ansley.
In one example of Western misconception, Ansley said that in a Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia seminar that he attended two years ago, Dennis Schmidt, a provincial court judge, showed a slideshow of his two-week banquet tour in China.
“He showed a beautiful courthouse building all made of white marble, and he said, ‘Just look at this magnificent court building, I never knew that there was that much white marble in the whole world. That shows how committed they are to the rule of law. ... The Chinese are just so far ahead of us that we’ll never catch up,’” said Ansley.
Having dealt with 300 litigation cases in China, Ansley revealed that despite the beautiful outer appearance, in Chinese courts, judges controlled by secretaries of the CCP make the verdicts behind closed doors.
“Judge Schmidt ended up by saying, ‘No matter what anybody says, there’s no harm in talking,’” said Ansley. “That seems fair enough, but I think it is harmful when the delegates we send are so gullible, uncritical, lacking in fundamental knowledge, [and bring misinformation to the rest of the world].”
Particularly at a time when the CCP is “terrorizing, torturing, incarcerating, and jailing” Chinese human rights lawyers, lawyers outside of China should fight for their rights, rather than becoming “craving apologists” for the Chinese regime, said Ansley.
Abduction of Chinese People
With reports from the World Health Organization during the Beijing Olympics, people outside of China got a peek of the environmental contamination in modern China.
Renowned exiled human rights attorney Guo Guoting considers the severe water pollution in China as the CCP’s new way of abducting Chinese people, since these external factors have killed many, particularly in rural areas.
Guo was the only graduate student of international environmental law in China in 1984 before he was refused education because he criticized Mao Zedong’s work. He continued his studies by himself and eventually became one of the 15 defense lawyers who dared to practice human rights law in China.
According to the latest official figures, more than half of China’s lakes, rivers, and other water bodies have reached level five out of six in contamination.
“If a water body reaches level five, nobody can use the water, whether farmers or animals,” said Guo.
Along the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, 21,000 chemical factories have caused contamination severe enough to create about 100 “cancer villages,” said Guo.
“And now ‘cancer towns’ and ‘cancer counties’ are even forming.”
Just in 2005 alone, China’s Ministry of Health revealed that 7,500,000 died of cancer in China, among 60 percent of the deaths was due to environmental contamination. Guo suggested that the severe contamination in the past half a century is due to the CCP’s ignorance of the environment.
Guo said that China has been able to produce cheap products and become the world’s factory because the CCP agrees to build countless factories without caring about the environment and Chinese people’s health.
According to Trend Magazine in 2004, more than 1.2 million influential CCP officials and their families have settled in countries outside of China with large funds.
“So why would they escape? Because they know that the CCP, this wrecked ship, is about to collapse. So they are ready to leave China and stay free of consequences,” said Guo.
In 2005, Guo came to Canada after having his license confiscated for his defense of Falun Gong practitioners in China.
