China Outlaws Telling The Truth About Communist Party 'Heroes And Martyrs'
from the no-one-does-Orwell-better dept
China's participation in the world market tends to portray the country as far more open than it actually is. China's does have some love for capitalism. Democracy, not so much. There's not much participation in the marketplace of ideas, thanks to continuous, ever-increasing censorship measures.
Nothing's going to change in the near future. The sitting president was just rewarded with the title appendage "for life," thanks to a bought-in (and possibly bought) parliament stripping away term limits earlier this year. Chinese citizens have been rewarded for their enforced loyalty with a government-controlled internet experience and a scoring system that grants/strips perks based on a perverse "morality" algorithm.
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, as the adage goes. The Chinese government is ensuring Cultural Revolution reruns by forcing the nation to forget inconvenient facts. A new law now makes it illegal to speak ill of the long-dead.
China’s Communist Party has always understood the importance of policing its history.
On Friday, it tightened the screws further with a new law banning the slander of “heroes and martyrs” — figures drawn from wartime propaganda said to have given their lives in defense of the Communist Party or the nation.
Chinese schoolchildren are taught about the heroic deeds of figures who fought against the Japanese during World War II, or who gave their lives for the Communist Party in the civil war with the Nationalists. Memorials to some of the most famous dot the country.
Now, it will be illegal to suggest that those tales might not be wholly factual.
The rewriting of China's history will require the involvement of everyone in the country. Beyond a long list of instructions for compulsory celebrations/commemorations at the local government level, there's also plenty of censorship and compelled speech to be had. Here's how the media will be used to burnish the reputation of "heroes" and "martyrs." (All translations via China Law Translate)
Article 18: The departments of culture, press, radio and television, film, Internet information, and so forth, shall encourage and support the production and promotion of excellent literary and artistic works, and radio or television programs, and publications and with the subject of publicizing or carrying forward, the spirit of heroes and martyrs.
Article 19: Radio stations, television stations, newspaper and periodical publishing units, and Internet information service providers shall widely publicize the deeds and spirit of heroes and martyrs by playing or publishing works on the theme of heroes and martyrs, public service advertisements, and special columns.
And here's what's forbidden:
The names, likenesses, reputation, and honor of heroes and martyrs are protected by law. The names, likenesses,reputations and honor of heroes and martyrs must not be insulted, defamed, or violated through other means by any person, either in public places, online, or through radio, television, film or publications. The names and likenesses of heroes and martyrs must not be used, or covertly used, by any organization or individual for trademarks or commercial advertisements, damaging the reputation and honor of heroes and martyrs.
And this is all tied together with a "see something, say something" program that mandates any attempted slurs of Communist martyrs must be reported to the government immediately and all efforts made to banish it from television screens, newspapers, and the web.
Even historical research must comply with the new law. If historians discover facts that conflict with the official narratives, the facts must go.
Yue Zhongming, a member of the standing committee, said at a news conference that although the law is not intended to restrict academic freedom, it does not give permission to harm the honor of the nation’s heroes.
“We often say there is no banned area of academic research, while there is a bottom line of law,” he said.
China's history will be nothing more than propaganda. The rest of the world should call it what it is: self-serving bullshit, backed by men with guns doing the bidding of government with no moral compass.
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Filed Under: censorship, china, free speech, heroes, martyrs, truth
Reader Comments
The First Word
“No, this is a prime example of Frank Herbert's version:
made the First Word by Ninja
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World Historian: "This [insert Chinese govt-approved martyr here] has a long documented history of being a dipshit."
Chinese historian: "This [the same martyr above] was a hero that could come back from the dead and who could shot energy blasts from his hand to purify Japanese barbarians!"
We the Nerds: "So that's the Chinese name for Goku?"
Trump (because why not?): "COFVEFEFE!"
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Re:
Well actually... Son Goku is the Chinese name. Dragonball was (very loosely) based on Journey to the West, a Chinese folktale.
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the truth is sweetest...
conversely, when people do want you to have it... it becomes bitter!
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'You are free to lavish all the praise you want on them'
Yue Zhongming, a member of the standing committee, said at a news conference that although the law is not intended to restrict academic freedom
Liar.
'You are free to praise those we name as heroes, but it's a criminal offense to say anything negative about them' is absolutely intended to restrict academic freedom, and in fact that's the entire point of the law.
it does not give permission to harm the honor of the nation’s heroes.
If 'accurately reporting history' is enough to 'harm' the honor of the 'nations heroes', then they didn't have any honor to harm in the first place. Much like anyone who demands respect doesn't deserve it, by their insistence that no-one disrespect anyone they hold up as heroes my default assumption is that no-one so named deserves respect.
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Re: 'You are free to lavish all the praise you want on them'
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Re: Re: 'You are free to lavish all the praise you want on them'
Not a problem, the 'anyone who demands respect doesn't deserve it' rule applies to past, current and future individuals, so it would also apply to a 'modern hero'.
As for illegal, given I'm in another country I think I'll go with 'I don't care'(in the same way I couldn't care less if I violated a blasphemy law, which this basically is, from another country), and will exercise my ability to mock obscene laws that those directly impacted might not be able to.
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Re: Re: 'You are free to lavish all the praise you want on them'
ooh, did I just defame the Communists by associating them with a Commode? They both take in the stuff we don't want and flush it away (be it actual crap, or those pesky 'freedoms' and 'liberties' that people think they deserve).
All your base are belonging to us, Muahaha
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Re: 'You are free to lavish all the praise you want on them'
This has "China wants to hide atrocious stuff carried out by those martyrs not to taint the image of the current state" printed all over.
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Re: Re: 'You are free to lavish all the praise you want on them'
Not so much equivalence, then. But sure, we're evil too. Of course.
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No, this is a prime example of Frank Herbert's version:
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I wonder what the department of so forth does. It sounds like it could be a great place to slack off.
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so you're going with the old "yellow peril" cultural xenophobia?
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Swing and a miss
If that was the best defense you could muster for such a disgusting law, you really shouldn't have bothered.
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Re: so you're going with the old "yellow peril" cultural xenophobia?
China has a proven record of governmental control over what its citizens can and cannot read or post on the Internet. This column is not about some imagined form of racism; it is about pointing out the harsh nature of Chinese censorship—ostensibly as a warning against letting the US government do the same thing.
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So, exactly the same as everywhere else, then.
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Re:
Propaganda and idolizing past 'heroes' is fairly prevalent across the globe to be sure, but making it outright illegal to question said propaganda and required to praise and 'honor' those the government holds up as 'heroes and martyrs' goes quite a bit beyond that.
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Re: Re:
Each nation has specific taboos that you cannot talk about. Heck even in America while you have freedom of speech, there are a lot of people still able to marginalize people with different or new thoughts about history if they don't fit certain narratives.
In fact, education in general is exactly just this in a nutshell... teaching people what you want them to believe. Everyone participates in indoctrination. It just happens to only be bad when that indoctrination is something you don't like.
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There's one that has long interested me about America. Not a secret, but not talked about either.
Canadian fighter jets used to shadow Russian long-range bombers coming over the pole. American fighters would take over at the US border. Hours later the bombers would return. Or not; presumably those continued on to Cuba.
They were set up for aerial reconnaissance, of course. And the US wanted it. "See, we really have all those missle silos. And we'll even open a few for you to confirm that they contain missiles." "See, we really have that much agricultural and industrial capability. Yes, we have the tractors and combines to get produce off the fields. Feel free to count them! And unlike you, we have the rail and road network to get the goods to market." "Take a good look. In any war, nuclear or conventional, you cannot win."
But long after the cold war ended, you can't tell the American people that Russian bombers were criss-crossing the US.
(The Russians and Americans are still doing reconnaissance overflights under the Treaty on Open Skies. But not using bombers.)
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And had it not been for those show-stoppers, it might have been an interesting arms race to watch in the decades ahead, with each side alternately creating an airplane that could fly higher and faster than the plane trying to shoot it down. And to think that the SR-71, a plane designed in the late 1950s, still holds the speed record to this day.
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Re: Re: Re:
"Each nation has specific taboos that you cannot talk about."
We live in a society filled with taboos. Even if those taboos gradually fade away and are replaced with other taboos. It used to be that we couldn't say certain 4-letter words. Now we can't say certain 6-letter words, and ironically the people most zealously enforcing the 6-letter taboo are the very same people who most zealously refused to respect the 4-letter taboo.
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is enforcing "history libel" only a bad thing when *THEY* do it?
In many countries in western Europe, the act of dissenting with official government-sanctioned WWII history (and in particular regarding Jewish history during that time period) is a serious crime with serious prison sentences. Yet no Western mainstream media publication ever questions this free-speech Black Hole, and even supposed "free speech" crusaders --including Techdirt-- have been uncharacteristically silent when it comes to this particular issue.
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Re: is enforcing "history libel" only a bad thing when *THEY* do it?
I guess if you bring such things into a debate you'd be a criminal there? And I'm betting some people will fail at reading comprehension and assume I'm some sort of anti-Semitic idiot. Note to you: I'm not, I do believe the Holocaust was a monumental fail for humanity and we should study about it to avoid repeating the atrocities but we must be critical as well. The winning part always tends to build a "more fitting" narrative to whatever happened.
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Re: Re: is enforcing "history libel" only a bad thing when *THEY* do it?
Having not lived long enough, I can't really say whether or not Holocaust stories in the news media and pop culture themes were more or less common before Israel's 1967 conquest, but certainly the many taxpayer-funded Holocaust Museums that virtually every US city now has (and the huge "national" one in Washington D.C.) are very recent creations, something that seems oddly out of place considering that it's something that happened on the other side of the planet that this country had basically no involvement in (not to mention being the only one of history's many recent genocides that gets any attention and taxpayer dollars whatsoever)
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Re: Re: Re: is enforcing "history libel" only a bad thing when *THEY* do it?
Reading someone refer to Holocaust victims as “aggressors“ reminds me of why we keep that “dust-collecting piece of history” alive and in full view: To stop anti-Semitism before it takes hold in our culture and society again. People who joke about the phrase “never forget” nowadays often fail to remember why we must never forget the Holocaust. If you think it cannot happen anywhere else, digest this factoid: The internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was ruled legal by the judiciary…and that ruling has never been challenged or rescinded. Internment camps sit a simple hop-skip-jump away from the more lethal concentration camps in both function and philosophy.
We keep the memory of the Holocaust alive, we re-tell the stories of survival and heartbreak and death and destruction and the banality of evil that made the Holocaust such an horrifically effective plan, to stop people from creating a climate where it could conceivably happen again. If you think you are on the side of the fight that wants to prevent another Holocaust, ask yourself why you are willing to write off those stories as “dust-collecting piece[s] of history”. Your answer will tell you whether you would be a rebel or a collaborator.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: is enforcing "history libel" only a bad thing when *THEY* do it?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: is enforcing "history libel" only a bad thing when *THEY* do it?
That doesn't invalidate any of your points about how important it is to remember the Holocaust (and I thank you for pointing out the thing about the internment camps, as I don't think I'd realized it), but it's still important to avoid mischaracterizing the arguments of one's opponents.
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Re: is enforcing "history libel" only a bad thing when *THEY* do it?
Randomly chosen from my first page of search results:
Definitely verboten to mention a German hate-speech law being a 'Raging Dumpster Fire'
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Google, et al.
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Re: Google, et al.
Maybe those manufacturers should be remembered for their role in the imprisoning and torturing of thoughtcrime in China -- in exchange for a quick buck.
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Re: Re: Google, et al.
Thankyou Cisco.
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Re: Re: Google, et al.
I laugh, change the channel and laugh at some other crap.
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Re: Re: Re: Google, et al.
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Will your history books reflect the egregious harm he has perpetrated on the World at large?
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And I say that as someone who has no delusions that Trump has any virtues at all beyond not being Hillary. I mean, a little self-awareness please?
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There will be many things published and there will be many people reading. It would be interesting to know which version of this insane clown assault will be more popular in the future. Will it be the detailed full of facts version or the watered down excuse laden song of denial? Either way there will the steadfast supporters and there will be those who have accepted the facts.
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Chinese communist mantra
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Right to be forgotten
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Re:
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Never speak ill of the dead.
Especially, emphasise their potential, what they could have done for the world if their lives weren't cut short, if communities weren't torn apart by war and violence.
As for whoever wronged them...say nothing about them. Denounce the sins themselves, not the sinner. Murder and robbery and slavery should be remembered for the harm they've done to innocents, but the monsters who did those deeds don't deserve to have their names passed down through history.
Basically what I'm saying is; if the law is to never say bad things about these 'heroes' and 'martyrs', don't. Talk about what their innocent victims went through, decry the harms done to them without a mention of the perpetrator.
And if this Chinese government still tries to prosecute you for speaking ill of their heroes, when you've never spoken a word against them, then that is an admission beyond all doubt that what you're saying is true.
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One would hope you'd have enough time to clearly explain the rhetorical victory you've achieved as you're being hauled off.
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Truth is only scary to ones who do evil
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I can't believe it.
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Yet another variation on...
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China's does have some love for capitalism. Democracy, not so mu
Have you been outside the offices of Techdirt lately? But this, from your article could have been written about Los Angeles, New York, or anywhere USA:
China's history will be nothing more than propaganda.
The rest of the world should call it what it is: self-serving bullshit, backed by men with guns doing the bidding of government with no moral compass....
China has clear morality at the pedestrian level- and even the poor have homes, vehicles, and can employ themselves selling anything.
I am here in China right now-and their military trolls, censorship, human flesh search engines...Twitter/Weibo, Baidu/Google, Tinder/Tantan dating app- are EXACTLY THE SAME, with only cultural nuance and bias separating them.
The real issue, which no one speaks out loud, is that NSA-Israel-Britain (in that order) is mediating our discourse along sectarian lines- Sheldon Adelson v Soros and Saban
It is amazing here in China-I havent seen a single MRAP at a donut shop, or peeople getting shot in the back for saggy pants.
In America, I was mobbed, harassed, stalked, databased, harassed online and off for criticizing the sectarian, religious fanatic surveillance state that America is, by LEOs and community policing and NGOs and SJWs for decades because of peace activism, anti-apartheid/Israel activism,and criticism of the US police state.
Here, not so much as a bad look from any bao-an/police officer, not even once.And no one wears Karl Marx beards either, though all of those deep cover democracy subverters employed by DHS and its armies of Constitution destroyers all seem to favor the jihadi tactical beard.
US V THEM is really Ich, Du, and even that needs a makeover.
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Re: China's does have some love for capitalism. Democracy, not so mu
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And I said to myself: is this somehow worse than Facebook censoring Palestinian accounts, or China employing the EXACT measures that the Pentagon uses in online mobbing, and offline surveillance?
The answer is: I am in China now.
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"government with no moral compass"
I'd argue that it's a very different moral compass than what you're used to. China used Confucianism for far too long for Communism to replace it. In fact today's modern "Communist" Party far closer resembles Confucianism of old (in it's dictates and beliefs) than it resembles any type of Marxism. It's always been about control and order and I for one wouldn't be to surprised if Xi or one of his later successors starts bringing up the 'Mandate of Heaven' again.
Chinese leaders for centuries fought over and had been graded on how well they could bring 'order' and 'prosperity' to the masses, with little thought given to the individual freedoms or desires of those at the bottom. Propriety and filial piety were standards for keeping said order, so seeing said rules being established is nothing new; and in fact a return of old (Confucian) rules the old Communist party had smashed (rightly) so many years ago.
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So China is part of North Korea now?
I guess they watch endless replays of their edited versions of The Empire Strikes Back.
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