Monthly Archives: July 2014

Tang Sancai Art – A Spectacular Horse!

Tang Sancai will always be one of brightest pages in Chinese history and it is at loss for creating horses. In this Tang Sancai horse, his ears are straight up and his eyes wide open. His hair is combined with red and blue, the blue carpet is decorated with white spots. The back part of his body is decorated with a flower, and the forward a bell. This Tang Sancai horse is well decorated and it looks spectacular! This Tang Sancai horse can be a great gift for anyone!Tang Sancai Art – A Spectacular Horse!

Tang Sancai Art – An Elegant, Plump Horse!

This Tang Sancai horse is so well-designed that it seems like alive, a real one! All the body parts are elastic, and they are all connected so much naturally and smoothly. Even better, the change in its figure is made just to the point. Overall, the Tang Sancai horse is elegant and plump, it reflects the happy and blooming atmosphere of that dynasty. This Tang Sancai horse can be used for business, garden and home decoration, no matter where it is placed, it adds color and style!
Tang Sancai Art – An Elegant, Plump Horse!

Tang Sancai Art – A Horse That Looks Like A General!

This Tang Sancai horse is made in Tang Dynasty and it is 50cm high. His long hair somehow warped toward the outside, they flow like a waterfall, his red carpet flies with the blow of the wind. His ass is even decorated with a flower! What is the most impressive is the prestige of the horse, he seems like a general that never fails on the battlefield. This Tang Sancai horse can be a gift for anyone, it will make you proud!
Tang Sancai Art – A Horse That Looks Like A General!

A Beautifully Decorated Tang Sancai Horse!

This Tang Sancai art is made in Tang Dynasty with the height of 31cm. The horse stretches and raises his head, his ears are straight up, eyes wide open and looking in the front. On his back is a colorful carpet, and all over his body are flower bells and white spots. After all, this Tang Sancai art is in a great design and it is extremely precious!

A Beautifully Decorated Tang Sancai Horse

Chinese Arbitration Law

Confucius said: “I can hear a court case as well as anyone, but there need be a world where there is no reason for a court.” This sums up the general attitude of China towards litigation or arbitration even up to the recent years. As late as 1990s, people did not know what arbitration was and litigation was something you only participated if you had committed a serious crime. After the opening up policy of the 90s, rapid economic developments took place. Foreign investments increased and participation in the Chinese domestic economy became more active. Because the judicial system was never transparent and was ruled by judges mostly without formal legal education, arbitration and arbitration law became a significant part of China’s economical interactions with the world.

Chinese Arbitration Law
Mediation and conciliation are still the preferred method of dispute resolution in China and is expressly encourage under Chinese law (Article 9 of Civil Procedure Law). Arbitrators and judges will often encourage parties to mediate or conciliate rather than litigate. And most people would consider a bad “guan xi” – relationship building, to arbitrate or litigate. It is considered losing face if they end up in a court or in an arbitration room. (This is perhaps due in part to the Chinese lack of trust in third parties?) The most established arbitration commission, CIETAC, also expressly encourages mediation or conciliation and estimates that more than half of the disputes they see are resolved by mediation. As China’s economy becomes more involved, passing Japan and becoming the second largest economy, its arbitration law is rapidly maturing. The central government currently remains relatively hands-off to arbitration reform and rarely interferes with the establishment of an arbitration commission and its established rules. The basis of arbitration laws in China, as well for mediation and conciliation, is the willingness of the parties to enter into arbitration.
No commission may arbitrate if the parties had not agreed to the arbitration, or if one party retracts their agreement to arbitration by consent. The court then must proceed with litigation. Therefore, parties only arbitrate if they have agreed to arbitration and mediation or conciliation had failed.

Arbitration is becoming a preferred method of dispute resolution in China primarily due to the Confucius influence of social harmony. Arbitration has the value of promoting social stability and order and thus social harmony. Arbitration is also very efficient and since arbitration decisions are final it is also effective in managing a transformation from a planned economy to the more agile socialist market economy. Arbitration also has the advantage of privacy, which is something that the Chinese people values but do not have. This may be another good reason why arbitration is becoming popular for both domestic and foreign business transactions. However, as a foreign investor or business partner wish to arbitrate thinking to avoid the somewhat partial and sometimes heavily influenced judicial system, beware the arbitration law of China has also been somewhat of a protectionist in Chinese domestic interests. This may be a reason why the central government has not been quick to interfere with the development and policy aspect of arbitration commissions, as they are perhaps hoping for more investment confidence that will help boast the Chinese economy in the coming years.
To understand China’s interest in its economic development conflicting with its other domestic interests, we must take a look at the development of Chinese arbitration laws and the arbitration system: Before 1949, there were no arbitration courts in China.

During the rule of Chinese emperors, there was no need for arbitration because mediation took care of most civil disputes. Local officials were only responsible for what we understand as criminal disputes.

In 1954, China funded its first arbitration commission to deal with foreigners – the Foreign Trade Arbitration Commission. This was renamed to CIETAC in the 1990s. However, CIETAC did not have the various contract laws to integrate into its arbitration process at the time to ensure a complete arbitration process. In the 1980s, China undertook to unify contract law from a dual track system. In the 1990s, China aggressively developed its laws dealing with both foreign and domestic contract disputes to continue its legal reform. In 1987, China acceded to the NY convention while making two reservations: that it will only enforce awards under the convention that are rendered in other contracting states, and the agreement only applies to China’s commercial interest. The purpose of this convention is to promote and stabilize international business transactions in the domestic market by promoting the enforcement of foreign arbitration disputes. Subsequent to the unification of Contract law, Chinese arbitration is jointly covered by the Civil Procedural Law of 1991, and eventually the Chinese Arbitration Law of 1994. During the mid 1990s, China saw an increase in governmental corruptions and a decline of international opinions of its business and legal integrity because of official interferences and unjust regulations. In 1995, to promote the Chinese economy and the arbitration system as a sound and just system, the Chinese government restructured its domestic arbitration system and required that the commission be independent of any administrative organizations to give confidence to the global community doing business in China. This led to a massive dismantling of the arbitration commissions having ties to the various local and national government.

In 2004, there was another special amendment to the Chinese arbitration law that barred judges from being arbitrators to show that China is serious in making its arbitration system world-class and impartial to governmental interference thus minimizing investor risk and boast confidence. Today, the Chinese arbitration system and many of its arbitration commissions are on a race to liberalism to attract foreign clients to help boast domestic market confidence in direct foreign investments in China. In this race to liberalism we see just a bit of give to national and domestic protectionism. Parties’ autonomy became the driving force in this digression: State is fearful of parties’ abilities to choose what rules apply and what forum to arbitrate, agreements involving arbitration with foreign laws, what languages to use. Foreign lawyers are now able to serve as legal agents to the proceedings, and China has allowed ad hoc arbitrations in a Bilateral Investment Treaty (ad hoc arbitration is not allowed otherwise). To further attract foreign investments and build investment confidence in the market should dispute arise, the Chinese arbitration laws now have many aspects that resemble international arbitration rules: arbitration agreements may be set in a separate document or in the contract itself; no formal writing is required to establish an arbitration clause; expression of intent is critical to the validity of arbitration clause; selective panel of arbitrators with higher educational requirements.

However, we still see domestic protectionism at work in many aspects of Chinese arbitration law as well as some of the case decisions. For example, in the Yonging [cite?] case where the international arbitration commission awarded judgment to a foreign party, the Chinese intermediate court exercised its power of interim measures protection against the foreign party and decided to refuse enforcement of awards to the foreign party. We also see that in choice of law, where there is a foreign related contract, parties although may choose the law governing the interpretation and enforcement of their agreements, but the tribunal is required to apply the law that has the closest connection to the law of the place where the contract is to be performed. We must also note that under Chinese arbitration law, the choice of law or arbitration proceedings and rulings may not violate Chinese law; and we see almost in all of the Chinese laws there is a reserved clause where the Chinese government retain the discretion to change the law in accordance to public policy. We must also note that to arbitrate in China, one is required to choose an arbitrator from a list of State approved arbitrators. It should also be noted that the arbitrator may attempt to mediate first and is allowed to access parties individually.

If mediation should fail, the arbitrator is then to proceed but the question we must ask is if the arbitrator can be impartial at this point. Also with the prevalent of “guan xi” = relationship building and face saving, there is no telling if these arbitrators are “approved” based on merits or on their connections. With a lack of transparency, there is no system of check and balance to protect one’s interest against the Chinese domestic interest. There is also no right to discovery therefore no truth guarding tool such as testifying under oath, cross-examinations, etc. There is also the problem of local protectionism. While the central government may be well intended to encourage fair dealing with foreign parties, the local government may choose to protect their own interest by not enforcing judgments or interfering with arbitration procedures. (State control is not absolute after all?) Another problem with arbitration to the Chinese legal structure is that it does not encourage legal reforms. With everything private, it is impossible to tell what legal procedure and substantive legal decisions made an impact to social and economical growth and which hinders such growth.

For example, there is no consumer protection in China and if everything goes under arbitration, consumer legal protection may never emerge. So, under the planned economy, there is no need for China to develop its arbitration system. However, since the opening up and the reforms in the 90s, and early 2000s, China has seen a growth in its arbitration system and reforms in its arbitration laws. There is a positive sign that a race to liberalism in establishing arbitration commissions is occurring, yet we see both local protectionism as well as national protectionism in play. The strength in the Chinese arbitration system is its 2000 years of history in dispute resolutions independent of the judicial system. Given the Chinese judicial system is still immature, the fast evolving arbitration system combined with a mediation strategy may help China boast its market confidence as intended. However, China needs to be careful not to regulate the arbitration process so much so to discourage investments, but to regulate it just so to allow market confidence.

Constitutional Law

The first People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s Constitution was written in 1954. There are three entirely different constitutions enacted by the National People’s Congress subsequently: in 1975, 1978, and finally in 1982. The 1982 Constitution has been amended four times since its enactment. This may seem strange to the westerner, but to the Chinese, this is necessary because of the rapid political and social changes during the last 60 years of the PRC.
The Chinese constitutional progress marks a unique transformation of an ancient feudalistic nation to a socialist market economy wishing to be ruled by law. In 1949, the People’s Republic of China officially announced its existence to the world on October 1st. At the time, China was operating under a Constitution of the Nationalist Party (GMD). The Communist party, however, felt the necessity to assert its own identity and its own Marxist and Socialist ideals. Before the 1954 Constitution, China was held in legitimacy by the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPCCC).
In 1954, the Chinese Communist Party sought to solidify its power and created a Constitution that was deeply influenced by the Soviet Union. Just emerging from WWII and the civil war, China was not focused on its economic developments but on its ideological developments. The 1954 Constitution specifically focused on the People’s Congress as the fundamental power of the political system in PR and emphasized the importance of socialist principles.
Constitutional Law
The Chinese constitutions gave power and legitimacy to the National People’s Congress, but the NPC is confusingly supreme to the Chinese Constitution The NPC is responsible for amending or rewriting the constitution as necessary and it retains the power of judicial review and other significant powers. (It must be pointed out here that it is a common understanding of the Chinese PRC culture that everything is “under the leadership of the CCP,” therefore, how much power the NPC may exercise freely is an open question for debate.) Because China is a unitary state, the Constitution does not allow separation of power. This may be a remaining attitude from the feudalistic days where there was no separation of power in an emperor’s court. The NPC therefore is the highest organ of the state but subject to the NPC under the Communist “leadership”.

The Standing Committee is in session year round to supplement the power of the NPC while the NPC is not in session. The State Council is the primary authority for all things administrative, and acts as the executive branch. This branch of the government seems to exercise power almost exclusively from the NPC but under the leadership of the Communist government. (In essence, one can argue that in a unitary system where there is no check and balances, there is a dualist governing structure and the power is separated between the Standing Committee and the State Council.) It must be noted here that in 1989 it was the State Council, which had the power to issue martial law for regions below a province, that issued the order to for the use of military forces against student protestors on Tiananmen.
Under the NPC, there are other functionary state powers such as the President, the Supreme Court, the Central Military Commission, etc. At the grassroots level, there is the local people’s Congress which is the unified power of the various grassroots levels. This is an interesting structure to note along side of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) because the CCP keeps a very tight reporting structure on its local party sectaries. On a national level, the power of the party is legitimized by the NPC and the State Council and reinforced by the Central Military Commission (whose chair is the same person as the CCP National Party Sectary). But the grassroots level where the CCP supervises the local people’s Congress in its elections and operations, the CCP is able to maintain a very powerful and centralized control.
This is a reverse centralization of power where the grassroots CCP reinforces the NPC by its delegation/deputies. This is one of the reasons why China is able to not only easily amend its Constitution, but also completely rewrite its constitutions. Following the notice on reversed centralization of power, I want to account for some of the changes through China’s Constitution to bring some concrete examples of the immensely powerful political structure China has in place: Following the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, all laws of the Chinese 1954 Constitution were abolished. It was a period of chaos and the concept of constitutionalism did not emerge until the end of the Cultural Revolution in the mid 1970s. In 1975, with a heavy influence of the remnant leftist thoughts, a new constitution was adopted by the NPC.

Another constitution was enacted in 1978

These two changes reflected the immaturity of the Chinese legal and political structure at the time, and the instability from the famine of the late 50s and early 60s leading into the Cultural Revolution. Finally in 1982, with the understanding of social order taking roots in a rule of law, the NPC finally enacted a modern constitution that not only supported a socialist model, but also adapted to the needs of economic reform and the opening up. In every step of the way, the government, or the Communist Party, depended on the responses of its grassroots structure to enforce these amendments. The Red Guard need not be explained in detail, it is enough to note that they are responsible for carrying out political attacks on existing party members that opposed the CCP on fundamental grounds.
It is worth the attention to note that China was capable of overturning generations of established political structure on a whim simply because of the easy of corruption of its reverse centralization of power. Developing an economy in a socialist structure was a novel thing in the early 1980s and China, although had a modern constitution, still had to amend it to fit with the need of market evolution. Therefore, in 1988, the NPC adopted amendments aimed to legitimize the private economy to increase productive use of land by allowing transfer of land use. This was significant because at the time, China was based on an agricultural economy and the lands were collective owned. But because of the failure of planned economy, and increasing need for industrialization, China needed to be able to transfer state owned land to parties with the knowledge and necessary capital to invest and transform unusable land into factories.

This was also motivated by an increased interests in foreign investments

In 1993, the NPC again amended the 1982 constitution by officially changing from a traditional planned economy to a socialist market economy. There were also amendments to change State owned operations to “State run” operations and changing the nature of rural collective responsibility system to a system linked to production. These changes were made because China had experienced significant corruptions and common lack of communal efforts during the failed planned economy. In theory, a Marxist ideal socialist structure is motivated for each according to their ability. But if there were no market initiatives and equal pay for all skill and motivations levels, the economy was doomed to quickly deteriorate. Officials were not concerned with productions at the time and are more concerned with generating imaginary numbers on paper to please the authorities.
This led to a crash of China’s economy, a brain drain, amongst other things. So the 1993 amendment were aimed to address these critical shortfalls. China experience unprecedented growth as well as further corruptions given the 1983 amendments that allowed land use transfers. Changing the internal motivating force of the economy became the reason why the NPC again amendment the constitution in 1999 to address the importance of “rule of law.” This amendment promoted private ownership thus reducing the redundant public bureaucracy. At this time, we also saw the elimination and combining of many ministries under the State Council. This amendment is aimed to truly make meaningful progress in reforming the economy, China’s politics, and its social welfare. The most recent amendments to the Constitution were adopted in 2004 after China became a member of the WTO. This is a significant change because China officially recognized the existence of human rights in its Constitution.
This reflected over 20 years of public legal education and media campaign, progressive outside legal influences on China’s domestic law, and the urge for China to become a leading power in the global economy. Moving forward, we see the benefit of having a centralized power structure through the NPC and the CCP’s grassroots. China is able to quickly transform its economy from a planned economy to a market economy while preserving its socialist structure without violence.
It is able to rapidly adopt policies that deals with corruptions, adopt laws to conform to WTO agreements, etc. This is the strength of the confusing Chinese Constitution. However, the down side is that we are not clear as to the exact power and force behind China’s Constitution. It seems that the CCP controls over 2/3 of the NPC which can amend the constitution by over 2/3 vote; the Constitution really has no force beyond what the CCP desires. Given that there is lack of awareness of people’s constitutionally protected rights, it is difficult to say if the amendment in 2004 on human right really has any meaning.
Chinese government, the CCP, wants to protect its social order and stability for economic developments while the Chinese people are increasingly becoming aware of their inherent right and power to exercise their freedom against the party. As the middle class grows, there will be an eventual clash of interest between the people and the power. At that point, we will see the Chinese Constitution tested and we shall see if China is a true constitutional state.

Lawyering system/Criminal Procedural Law

China’s modern lawyering system and its criminal procedural laws are shaped by the two thousand years of philosophical and political traditions. It is also heavily influenced by China’s need to quickly adopt and transform into a recognized global entity with a stable social and economic order to enjoy the full benefit of international cooperation and economic development.
The goal for China in transforming its lawyering system is to develop a modernized legal profession to assist and regulate its economical developments while maintaining social stability. China needs to stabilize its increasing population by enlarging its middle class to offset the gap between the haves and have-nots. At the same time, China has to reassure its own people as well as foreign investors that its social and political structure is mature and sound so that economic growth can take place with minimum risks.
Because of this urgent need to develop its economy under a socialist framework, China has to depend on a well educated legal profession, a transparent legal system, a just and fair criminal procedure to give the sense of stability thus attracting both domestic and foreign investments. There are three dominate philosophies that influenced China’s modern legal culture: Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism. Daoism is somewhat of a mystical philosophy that affects every aspects of Chinese thought, it is therefore difficult to pinpoint to its impact on the lawyering system and criminal procedures in a short blog like this one. I will leave that topic for another day. Confucianism, on the other hand, emphasizes the importance on one’s duty and obligation to social order rather than individual rights.

Its teachings can be loosely summarized by the Chinese phrase “Li Fa”

“Li” literally translates to “the way of reason with respect to others.” This word gave the Chinese culture a sense of positive measure for preventing crime as one’s obligation to society and its harmony. “Fa” is the word commonly used today for “law,” however, it is traditionally understood as a measure of punishment that is enforced only when there is a confession of crime.

From this we see the manifested “guan xi,” the relations of people as social capital to resolve disputes. Under this tradition, rule of law is only the last resort to resolve crime against the human condition by punishing the significant wrongs. Therefore, under this philosophical model, there has never been a rigid code of law in China. The Western understandings of social order under the “rule of law” is difficult to enforce and implement since one’s good conduct has to come from the individual’s desire to do good. Legalism was established in 338 BCE and was employed by the first emperor of China.
It is a tradition that continued throughout the dynasties because it was successfully employed in unifying China. Therefore it has flourished with the establishment of a Chinese identity by Qin Shi Huan, the first emperor of China, in 221 BC. During the early 1900s, China took steps to reform its legal system due to significant amount of foreign economic trade with China and increasing number of trade disputes. In 1902, Emperor Guang Xu appointed a law reform commission, and in 1906 China established its first Supreme Court to indicate its willingness to develop a sound legal structure so they may be accepted into the international community and enjoy equal treatment by the foreign powers of the time.
Between 1912 and 1949, China promulgated criminal as well as commercial laws to continue its legal developments. However, since the establishment of the PRC in 1949, the Communist Party has attempted to eliminate feudalistic influences and felt that foreign influences cannot be tolerated in China either. China closed its doors, abolished the Nationalist (GMD)’s six codes of law and enacted a temporary basic laws heavily borrowed from the Soviets. This paved the ways for China’s future legal development. Because both Maoism and Confucianism avoided written laws in favor of general principles, community mediators are widely used as lawyers in a very loose sense to help resolve civil disputes. Mao also drew heavily from Legalism and believed that the State is the only authority in determining right from wrong. During the Cultural Revolution, this drew significant support from the Gang of Four and they became what people referred to as “Tou Huan De,” translated as “the mud emperors.” The people at this time leveraged their outward support of Maoism to act lawlessly. They used communist ideologies and extremist left thinking to find everyone who is not of their line of beliefs guilty of a crime. Punishment was carried out on the streets with significant violence. When the Gang of Four was finally arrested, and China’s legal reforms resumed, China introduced its Four Modernization policy in 1978.
This policy stressed the need to prevent lawlessness of the Cultural Revolution and the importance of developing its legal system for the purpose of stability and continuity to guarantee the people equal protection before the law. The two Constitutions in place in 1975 and 1978 still reflected the extreme leftist thinking of Maoist Cultural Revolution. However, in 1982, the NPC put forth a Constitution aimed to build legitimacy and stability. At this time, Deng Xiao Peng also pushed forward a massive legal education campaign to the citizens of China.
This campaign widely distributed the concept of “rule of law” to encourage social structure that was needed for the opening up policy and attracting foreign investments. This campaign is successful in many ways but also attracted a deeper understanding of inherent rights of the citizens by the Chinese people. Because of both economic development and foreign investment, the opening up policy, the recognition of private property, and the increasing understanding of citizenship and rights, Chinese people are slowly abandoning the traditional system of mediation for the adjudication process involving lawyer representations. In old China, there were no lawyers. Before the establishment of legal education, “lawyers” were trained by teachers as apprentices. Due to the influence of Confucianism, and Maoism in modern times, Chinese people have not supported the use of lawyers. Even during the 1982 campaign of rule of law, lawyers were agents of the State and did not represent the interests of the people. In 1978, China had about 2000 law students. In 1980, the Ministry of Justice issued a regulation that governed the legal profession in China requiring certification from the MOJ for lawyers and that lawyers be patriotic and support the socialist system. In 1985, the NPC standing committee initiated a five year public campaign under the 1982 rule of law campaign. In 1997, NPC issued the first comprehensive law governing the legal profession where lawyers were considered as functionaries of the state.
Today, Chinese lawyers are not agents of the State and do attempt to represent their clients even against State’s interests. Today’s lawyers are organized and supervised by the State as well as the bar association. The MOJ is responsible for qualification exams and licensing. Finally in 2004, with the last amendment of its 1982 Constitution to date, China recognized human rights as an important right of its people in Article 33, and recognized China as a socialist country of law in Article 5. Today, China is pushing forward a slow progression to meet the WTO’s transparency obligations.
However, there are still number of “Nei Bu” – internal policies that is unpublished concerning the implementation and interpretations of codified laws. While some Chinese lawyers may have guan xi to access these internal documents, foreigners are strictly forbidden to access these. This reflects a Chinese desire to maintain internal preservation of rule without outside influences. The Chinese criminal system has traditionally been inseparable from the political system. There were also no distinctions between civil and criminal adjudication. There was no separation of power and the local officials were the judge and executioner.
The old Chinese belief regarding Criminal law is that confession is the key. One of the four most famous strange cases illustrated this: Xiao Bai Chai was a young lady who was tortured and confessed to witnessing another man’s crime of murder. The man also confessed under torture. The man’s family appealed and took the case all the way up to the emperor. In the end, he saw justice and was set free. Today, this story is repeated by school children to honor the justice done by the ruling power; however, we may see this as an example that confession is at the heart of Chinese criminal prosecution. With the changing of Chinese legal culture, and Article 33’s recognition of human rights, lawyers who are now no longer the functionaries of the state and are receiving better education developing an awareness of their role in China’s social and economical development. The government as well recognizes the importance of standardizing their criminal and legal structure, educating their judges to give confidence to foreign investments. (At one point, most of the judges were not educated and were appointed simply for their guan xi, their military service, or other reasons.

Today, China is aggressively changing the educational requirements of its judges and lawyers, and ensuring a confident legal system.) Looking at the more recent developments, we see more litigation since the 1980s.

We see reforms in the judicial education and methods. We see more judicial interpretations and informal law making process. We recognize that Chinese lawyers are taking on a more and more significant role in its society. The old single rule system by either the emperor or the Communist party is rapidly changing to a new distributed power structure because of China’s WTO agreement exposing its legal and economical system to outside influences. However, China still has a long way to go. There are still underground lawyers who do not have a license and they are popular from the old mediation mentality.
The Bar exam passing rate is low because of low level of quality education. Violations of human rights are still significant and torture is still a method to be used to gain confession for crimes. If China is to seek a truly stable socialist market economy and encourage more foreign investments, it has to provide a more reliable and predicable legal system and more confident lawyers. It also may want to consider allowing foreign lawyers to practice in China and allow judicial interpretations and reviews to stand more ground. This allows a health way of legal development.

The Gang of Four and its legacy

A few days ago this statement was made in a private Chinese Law forum: “ many of the most ‘progress’ inducing trials in human history were trials in which the progressive side actually lost (indeed, the trial of the gang of four itself could easily be seen as an example of this)” This seriously confused me…
I wrote this in response: Growing up in China during the 80s, I always hear my mother’s story about the GOF. My mother’s family was deeply communist and sincerely believed in the party’s agenda. My mother’s father had been an orphan and the poorest of the poor. After 1949, he slowly rose to being a party representative of a local factory in the remote northwestern parts of LanZhou. He passed away when I was 10, I miss his optimism very much.

My father’s side of the family had been targeted during the CR, my father had some rather unpleasant memories that he won’t discuss in detail. But he is opening up a bit lately fearing for old age I guess. I am shocked to learn some of the things he recalls. I welcome his pessimism about China gladly.

Back to the point you raised, my mother and father had always argued about this as well. My mother had always attributed the whole CR on the GOF. My father always insisted on the guilt of others in the party and hold the GOF as simply the unlucky few used as scapegoats. I was barely a teenager back then and their bickering escaped me. Now I understand the importance.
I think the problem here may be that events like the CR, or what happened in 1984 (Beijing), in Modern Tibet, etc., is never documented accurately and is never openly reported to the Chinese people and others. This is of course in the interest of the State, and this does form a opinion base in its people, for the State. The good thing is China is at least willing to do the right thing sometimes, but not doing the right thing all the time is causing internal problems. The ripple effect is confusions I had when I first read your passage.
This made me appreciate the scope of the disinformation problem we have in China and the troubled times is yet to come in China’s future. All criticism of the government aside, I think the State is doing itself a disservice now by denying its own people and denying them the lessons of history. Well, it at least caused my family many nights of bitter arguing and the deterioration of my parent’s communications. In the long run, the Chinese people is crippled by this lack of coherent view of its own past. Then again, all nations suffer from such fate and the best we can hope for is history will be written by people with law books, not guns.

I apologize for not keeping this completely professional, and thank you for the enlightening conversation.

A few days ago this statement was made in a private Chinese Law forum: “ many of the most ‘progress’ inducing trials in human history were trials in which the progressive side actually lost (indeed, the trial of the gang of four itself could easily be seen as an example of this)” This seriously confused me… I wrote this in response: Growing up in China during the 80s, I always hear my mother’s story about the GOF.
My mother’s family was deeply communist and sincerely believed in the party’s agenda. My mother’s father had been an orphan and the poorest of the poor. After 1949, he slowly rose to being a party representative of a local factory in the remote northwestern parts of LanZhou. He passed away when I was 10, I miss his optimism very much.
My father’s side of the family had been targeted during the CR, my father had some rather unpleasant memories that he won’t discuss in detail. But he is opening up a bit lately fearing for old age I guess. I am shocked to learn some of the things he recalls. I welcome his pessimism about China gladly. Back to the point you raised, my mother and father had always argued about this as well.
My mother had always attributed the whole CR on the GOF. My father always insisted on the guilt of others in the party and hold the GOF as simply the unlucky few used as scapegoats. I was barely a teenager back then and their bickering escaped me. Now I understand the importance.
I think the problem here may be that events like the CR, or what happened in 1984 (Beijing), in Modern Tibet, etc., is never documented accurately and is never openly reported to the Chinese people and others. This is of course in the interest of the State, and this does form a opinion base in its people, for the State.
The good thing is China is at least willing to do the right thing sometimes, but not doing the right thing all the time is causing internal problems. The ripple effect is confusions I had when I first read your passage. This made me appreciate the scope of the disinformation problem we have in China and the troubled times is yet to come in China’s future.
All criticism of the government aside, I think the State is doing itself a disservice now by denying its own people and denying them the lessons of history. Well, it at least caused my family many nights of bitter arguing and the deterioration of my parent’s communications.

In the long run, the Chinese people is crippled by this lack of coherent view of its own past. Then again, all nations suffer from such fate and the best we can hope for is history will be written by people with law books, not guns. I apologize for not keeping this completely professional, and thank you for the enlightening conversation.