In Searching for Legitimacy

It appears the Communists Party of China is lost in its searching for ruling legitimacy.

Evidently, the 'Communists' roots was deemed inappropriate. The 45 anniversary of Mao's death was passed without a single word of mentioning in any state controlled media. Actually, any attempt that may reference to the Mao's past has been cracked down as brutally, as in the case of any democratic movement.

Last year, a statue of Confucius was quietly erected in the Tian'anmen Square. While the nation, mostly those in alignment with the Party cheering for the gesture to recognize the saint 2500 years old, the statue was removed quietly in one ordinary night.

The CCP stunted the nation again, when in an unprecedented memorial gathering of the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, attended by every top level officials in Beijing, President Hu Jintao personally announced the CCP was 'the most loyal beneficiary' of Dr. Sun Yet-sen. Five days later, Sun's humongous portrait was removed from the Tian'aanmen Square on the day of the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution.

The issue, probably, is that every possible candidates who potentially qualify as a spiritual legacy that the Party can hang on must also have emphasized moral and value that run into conflicts with the Party's practice.

Reading Notes, Yi Zhongtian's Limiting Government Power

Confucianism: One of three dominant religions through Chinese culture. The other two are Buddhism and Taoism. Confucianism is formed in the hundreds of years after death of Confucius. Therefore, it is, in many places, different from the original suggestions of Confucius (551-479 BC) himself. Otherwise, it is also known as Ru.

Yi Zhongtian argued, in the court of Chinese dynasties, Confucianism had been the mainstream ideology of officials conduct and state organizations. As the emperor represents the supreme power, one of duty for Confucianism which had been practiced by most intellectuals was to limit and contain that power. However, it had been a loosing battle, as the gravity of control continuously slid from ministers to the emperor through the thousands of years of history.

It is a very interesting read, and very nicely written. Yi, a scholar made known by his interpretation of ancient novel 'Three Kingdoms', certain has solid research to back up popularity performances.

As a by-product of the reading, it is also interesting to find many practice of the communism regime had deep root in the 5000 years of Chinese culture and philosophy studies.

“太上禁其心，其次禁其言，其次禁其事”《韩非子·说疑》Hanfei (280-233 BC) said, the best strategy is to confine people's mind, the middle approach is to silence people's words, the lowest method is to restrict people's conduct. Making sure people does think out of box is exactly what the Central Propaganda Ministry's functionality. Alas, with the spreading of Internet and technologies such as Google and micro-blog, this had been a mission impossible. Internet censorship and projects like the Great FireWall was the lower alternative to silence people's words. It is only matter of time when they will have to go the lowest approach, to physically constraint people.

“屈民而伸君，屈君而伸天”《春秋繁露·玉杯》Dong Zhongshu (179 - 104 BC) argued, the way it work is: People should sacrifice for their emperor; while the emperor should sacrifice for the ultimate-rule. In other words, the emperor can demand blind loyalty from people; while the emperor also are ready to commit himself on the route to the final happiness. This is exactly what the communism had been using to convince Chinese that they should never question the direction of the Party, because ultimately the Party will fight for their interests.

Chinese intellectuals see the deal as they submit the people (including themselves) to the emperor, while on the other hand, curtail the emperor's power by interpreting the 'Ultimate-rule'. Unfortunately, the chain often failed in the second link. When the emperor asks for loyalty, intellectuals often have no other choice to but to obey, including not to provide interpretations of the 'Ultimate-goal' that is not compatible with the emperor's mind. The dilemma continues to today.

Vote by Voting Down

Although Chinese people don't have right to vote up candidates for government offices, they do have luxury, for now, to vote movies they see offensive online, again for now.

Amid implications of brutal evictions, Avatar was ordered out of cinemas by Jan 22 on the eve of Jan 21. While theater managers across the country fumbled to arrange refund tickets sold for the weekend, Chinese Netizens were mobilized to show their dissatisfaction by voting down the movie that supposed to take the place where Avatar was evicted for.

Confucius (2010) is supposed to be a mainstream big production movie, featuring international stars such as Yun-Fat Chow, with an eye to promote the 'harmonic society' advocated by the communist government. The movie may not be a master piece, but by all measure a good entertainment for the money. However, it was voted down to 1.5 stars out of 5 in two days on popular movie review site douban, by over five thousand 1 star voting after the words of Avatar eviction leaked out.

The phenomenon is similar to what took place at Amazon Customer Review after PC game Spore make use of DRM to restrict gamers.

By the way, movie site 'IMDB' was also blocked about one month ago by the communist government, following faith of sites such as Wikipedia, Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and others.

Not willing to see another potential political conflict, Avatar was ordered to be reinstated two days later.