Hu Jia Hurts Whose Feelings?
Hu Jia, an AIDS activist currently imprisoned in China for the crime of subversion, was recently awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament. The Chinese government was displeased, reverting in their criticism of the award to their usual tropes of "interference in domestic matters" and "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people".
The former critique is misguided (at best) but the latter is just ridiculous. How, exactly, could the feelings of 1.3 billion Chinese be hurt by this award? Hu by all accounts is a patriot in the best sense; he exposes the corruption, malfeasance, and inadequacies of his government. To my knowledge, he has never personally attacked Chinese people, has never resorted to violence, and has never caused the è€ç™¾å§“ any harm.
Descriptions of China as a totalitarian police state are overblown, but the government still demands utter fealty to the policies of the Communist Party. In fact, the concept of "patriotism" in China is still tied to party loyalty, regardless of how the said party governs. Hu Jia doesn't demand the violent overthrow of the government; he merely wants it to operate better. Rather than hurting the feelings of Chinese people, I suspect many who know of him regard him, silently, as something of a hero.
November 3rd, 2008 - 18:27
By saying “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people”, I guess we can just simplely take it as “hurting the feelings of the Chinese authority”.
It’s so sad and ridiculous that what basically this man did was fighting for the basic human rights of people in his country. The CCP is hopeless.