China dissident jailed

So if people leave comments on the blog, I'll try to address them and also I'd like ideas for other topics to blog about. I want to write about Tibet, but i'd like to wait and see where the current situations heads a little before i write.



CommandoCacho commented about a leading human rights activist in China being jailed. I hate to write again about politics in Asia, but there's just been so much activity over there the past couple weeks. Hu Jia is a leading human rights activist in China, fighting for Tibetan independence, AIDS awareness, environmentalism, and democracy.

I really think it's terrible that he's been sentenced to prison, because he obviously only wants the best for his country. In the Chinese constitution, there is an article that grants freedom of speech to all citizens, unfortunately there are a few restrictions, not the least of which is "subversive actions", which is purposely vague so they can charge simple things as criticism against the government. Hu Jia, basically admits that he broke the law the way it's defined, but he thinks the law itself is wrong. China really is the most complicated and hard to understand country in the world, and there's no way to predict the future. To be honest, it's a shame, because people like Hu Jia really dont' get much support in China. Ever since the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, Chinese government basically said "you guys do whatever you want, don't challenge us, and we'll guarantee you strong economic growth." Unfortunately, this is more than enough for the vast majority of Chinese citizens, thus socially important issues don't get support. To put into perspective, this is largely true in any country, including the US. Hawaiians basically we're brutally invaded by America, but the economy there has been so good, people have good lives, and nobody cares anymore.

It's important to put things in perspective. China has a long way to go in terms of human rights, but to criticize it also is a bit ignorant. Rather than looking at it at this moment in time, if one looks at the progress it's made in the past 20 years, it's easy to see they're improving, rather than getting worse. You can't blame them for where they are now, if they're making progress in their own manner. The right attitude is "we greatly welcome your improvements, but lets not get too carried away because you still have a long way to go." And to be fair, the USA has a lot of human rights problems as well.

In terms of environmentalism, and AIDS, the government is making tremendous efforts. There's huge amounts of research on being environmentally friendly in China, because the government recognizes their resources are gonna run out. There's also huge amounts of AIDS support in recent years, although AIDS is still rampant in the countryside.

Lastly about democracy, as I stated earlier, the vast majority of urban Chinese simply don't care enough because their wealth is growing. Lots of people tend to praise the 1989 democracy movement, and I sympathize with their cause as well, but realistically it was doomed to fail. They didn't get nearly enough support to mount a serious effort, and lets be honest, they weren't really advocating democracy. China consists of about 400 million urban middle class and about 800 million rural villagers. The movement wanted to give political power to the educated middle class basically, the other 800 million would've been left without anything. Also, the movement was highly divided. Half of the protestors were young middle class students who wanted to make China change more rapidly, while the other half were lower class people who thought China had changed too much already, leaving themselves at the bottom of the economic spectrum.

So, certain aspects of China are improving, with a lot of problems still remaining. Whether they will ever have democracy.....I simply can't see it happening with 800 million rural uneducated farmers. If they implement democracy, nobody's gonna give them any power. The people who fight for democracy are urban middle class, and they're certainly not about to hand over all the power to the rural farmers who are the larger majority.