Public lecture on Politics

The recent Chinese defector ChengYonglin came to Melbourne Uni today to give a public lecture on Political Asylum Seeker in Australia and his experience of living under the control of the communist party. Having been living overseas for quite some time, I have grown my own opinion on such a sensitive political issue and my judgement comes basically from my Chinese education background and what I have learnt about CCP from western points of view.

The lecture theatre was fully occupied by the time Cheng made his speech. Annoyingly, or shamefully I should say, some Chinese audience, who were obviously not students, were grumbling when Cheng was speaking in the theatre. These people interrupted him by yelling and waving signs with words that went against him. They accused him as a “disgraceful betrayer” in an overwhelmingly abrupt manner that the police had to expose one of them in the middle of Cheng’s speech. I applauded when Cheng snapped back “I am shame of you”. It was really a humiliated moment for Chinese.

I would not repeat everything Cheng said in the theatre; there would be a lot of other’s interest to do so. What I want to jot down are the most touching points he made and my feelings towards his speech and attitude.

I don’t know much about Falungong, and I have no idea on what this network’s vision is. But I believe that the reason behind Cheng’s defection after working as a Chinese diplomat in Sydney councillors for four years is because he showed his sympathy to those Falungong believers and had helped some of them to eliminate their names on the embassy’s political black list.

I applauded for his frank claim on why he went to political school and joint CPP. “You could have good salary, and that was the most luxury job even you (those annoying Chinese audience) would admire”. Regardless the moral he holds, his claim is honest. Ask around, especially those youths, who does not want to live in a good life? Back in those days, Chinese people did not have choice; joining the party was indeed the best way to slip away from poverty. In my generation (born in the 80s), we were told that democracy was a bad thing, and communism would take over the world “in a near future”. When I was young, I believed that. Whereas, the more I touch news from the outside world, the more my view on communism changes. On top of that, grown up in the very South does not give me much influence from political issues. However, I understand that there are a large number of Chinese are angary with Cheng, most of them are from Northern and inner China where are heavily permeated with political and patriotic atmosphere.

I believed most of what he said, despite he disclosed the evil facts of dictatorship of my own country to the world. There is always someone trying to reveal the dark side of communism. As the new Chinese generation who has not suffered from the cultural revolution and are educated in the western world, I think most them are less concern about whether China should become communism or democracy than their personal goal. Political, as what I observe from my circles of friends, are dimming out of the lime line and distinguished them from their parents’ generation.

I think his initialtive is just trying to find justise in terms of communist politics. He is not a talented and typical bureaucrat, he is just a normal person. Maybe it is true that he betrays his political party and casts a bad image of Chinese politics to the world, but 党并不等于国家. I love my country, not CCP. We can not overturn communism overnight, and I don’t want to see China follows the down run of the former Soviet Union. In my opinion, giving CCP pressure on releasing liberty to its people from external organisations is a viable way to follow.