We are witnessing the most awesome sight in history: a great nation is awakening itself and peacefully throwing off tyranny. Conscience is discovering its strength, and through innumerable acts of conscience the people of China are reclaiming a future for themselves.
I come here today feeling strongly that I am a guest. I am from Chicago. I am literally a guest here in Hong Kong. I am perhaps also a guest in another sense. A Westerner, I have been asked to speak about matters of the Chinese people. But this is a special moment. The struggle in China today affects all of humanity. That struggle is between civilization and barbarism. Everyone throughout the world has a stake in it. Everyone must take a side in it. On the one hand, I am guest and a stranger to much that is around me. On the other hand, I am here as someone who represents all those around the world who stand with the Chinese people.
In the month of February we saw the withdrawals from the Chinese Communist Party inspired by the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party reach all time highs, with a peak rate of over 40,000 withdrawals in a single day. That is not surprising. Each month since the withdrawals began in December 2004 the rate of withdrawals has increased. Within days we will reach 9 million withdrawals.
Alongside the movement to withdraw from the Party there has sprung up the rights protection movement. This movement is extraordinary. Through relay hunger strikes it allows ordinary people throughout China and throughout the world peacefully to take a stand against oppression.
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Throughout China there are so many causes of grievance: farmers, workers, miners—everyone experiences the violation of human rights.
The rights protection movement provides a way for each individual in China to connect his or her own situation to the general need to defend human rights in China. Tyranny wants to isolate each individual and make that individual feel helpless before the power of the state. The rights protection movement allows each individual to take a first step out of that isolation. In doing so he or she can begin to understand better the connection between one's personal situation and the situation of the Chinese people. Before the individual might have felt passive and powerless. Now he or she has the means to act.
So, the rights protection movement allows the individual to take a step forward. But that step forward by itself must be incomplete. One can never achieve the protection of rights in China by the rights protection movement alone.
Mr. Gao Zhisheng, the initiator of the rights protection movement, has spoken about why this is so. I quote: "…the most urgent matter is to discard the fantasy. Starting from the people around you, using all the means to encourage the people beside you to withdraw from this murderous group, to no longer act as the murderers' accomplice, to no longer be the murderers' tools! Peacefully end the murderous group's pathetic life—withdraw from the CCP! Fundamentally get rid of Chinese people's disastrous misfortune!"
The existence of the CCP is the fundamental problem that the rights protection movement by itself cannot address. Only the dissolution of the CCP offers a way out for the Chinese people.
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It is worth reflecting for a few moments on why this is so. I would like to make three points.
First, it is impossible to reform the CCP. This past year we have seen one act after another of senseless violence. In Hanyuan County, in Taishi and in Shanwei we have seen soldiers gun down peacefully protesting people, people whose rights had been grievously violated.
Why does the CCP resort to such massive acts of violence, risking the condemnation of the world? The CCP can never allow a successful protest by the Chinese people. Should one protest succeed there would immediately follow a storm of protests. The CCP knows it can never back down an inch. It cannot do so because the CCP worships nothing other than its own power. Had the CCP been capable of recognizing something higher than itself, reform would have come to China long ago.
Second, the CCP is a cult. Mr. Xin Hao-Nian spoke vividly about the cultish nature of the CCP in a speech he gave at a forum on the Nine Commentaries held in Philadelphia a year ago. He compares the propaganda the CCP uses to brainwash the Chinese people to "wolf's milk." I quote Mr. Xin: "We all grew up by drinking the wolf's milk. We often notice such a fact: no matter whether it was in the years when we supported the CCP or we are opposing the CCP today, the 'wolf's milk' instilled by the CCP is continually fermenting and functioning in our body. We should eliminate it and restrain it."
The only way for the Chinese people to break the hold that cult has over their souls is to renounce completely all ties with it.
This brings me to my third point. When Gao Zhisheng submitted his withdrawal statement to the Epoch Times website, that statement concluded by saying "This is the proudest day of my life."
Read the withdrawal statements on the Epoch Times website. This occurs over and over again: The person withdrawing suddenly finds him or herself very happy or grateful to have withdrawn from the CCP.
Why is this? I believe it is because the individual who withdraws reclaims his or her own conscience. The act of withdrawing restores dignity and restores an individual's humanity.
Civil society only exists when individuals act independently on their own understanding. True unity can never be imposed from above. It exists in the willing assent by citizens to principles of right and wrong. That tacit agreement to be governed by what is right is what truly binds a nation together. The movement to withdraw from the CCP is restoring to China its society.
Rights are simply basic principles of morality. The success of the rights protection movement depends on the restoration to China of the individual's conscience.
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I want to conclude by saying one word about the paper I work for, The Epoch Times . The rights protection movement and the movement to withdraw from the CCP both depend on independent media. Independent media educate the Chinese people about the reality of the CCP. And independent media draw the world's attention to the dissidents who are risking all inside China.
The CCP understands this. That is why less than two weeks ago four CCP thugs broke into the offices of The Epoch Times here in Hong Kong and smashed a printing machine.
The hope for the future of the people of China—the hope for the future of the people of Hong Kong—depends on an independent media that tells the truth about the CCP. I hope the people of Hong Kong will understand: in standing with The Epoch Times, they are standing up for themselves.
Thank you.
The author is the Opinion Editor of The Epoch Times . These remarks were given at a rally celebrating nine million withdrawals from the CCP held on March 12 in Maple Park in Hong Kong.
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