Blog and Press Review: Oh, Rule of Law!

I’m sometimes wondering if one should really make a fuss and take issue with stuff that is written by the mouthpieces of a totalitarian political system, who praise the disciplinary investigation against Bo Xilai or charges against his wife as shining examples of how rule of law prevails in China . But if one wants to take issue, the following is a great way to do so:

It’s not rule of law if everybody’s doing it and you only oust the people who piss on the shoes of the top leadership. It’s not rule of law if every case of corruption is due to a lack of personal virtue on the part of the official with nary a word about the system that allows this kind of venality to flourish. It’s not rule of law if the police chief of a major city has to threaten to defect in order to get the attention of the central government.

Jeremiah Jenne, reacting to the  Global Times‘ coverage.

But another option, if you really want to insult Huanqiu Shibao, is to quote from it:

There is no contradiction between emancipation of mind and trust in the party’s central committee. Without emancipation of minds, trust in the central committee would be mere slavish conformism. It is exactly for the diversity we have, for having other options, that we truly discover that trusting the party’s central committee, implementing the party’s road map, is more reliable than any other method other people may teach us, and more able to create the conditions that make the country and the individual develop.

相信党中央和解放思想不矛盾，没有思想的解放，相信党中央就是盲从。正是因为我们有了多元化，有了其他选项，我们才真正发现，相信党中央，执行党的路线，比任何别人教我们的方法都更可靠，更能为保障国家和个人的发展创造条件。

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Related

Dr. Zhivago lives, Andresen / RIA Novosti, Aug 12, 2011

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Tags: accountability, blogging, China, China Global Times, Chongqing, Communist Party of China, conscience, corruption, education, history, Hu Xijin, human rights, ideology, image, journalism, media, partytalk, propaganda, quote, rule of law, totalitarianism