CHINA> National
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CHINA> National
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Democracy, science hold the key to China's future
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-05-04 14:48 BEIJING -- For the family of Li Wenyan, who was declared dead late March at the Jiujiang City Detention Center, the promise from the Jiangxi Provincial Public Security authority to make public the investigation of Li's death did not come easily. The initial reason given for Li's death, according to an analysis report of the detention center, was "a nightmare" Li had before he died in the early morning on March 27, more than two months after being detained for allegedly stealing cable for flood control. Responding to the inquiry of Li's family, the detention center offered Li Wenfu and Li Wenwei, his two brothers, only part of the videotape featuring Li's life in captivity, claiming that a hard disk failure caused their videotape player to malfunction right before Li's death.
But the latter's investigation proved that the disk failure was true as no videotape players recorded any image between the crucial time period: from 9:30 am on March 26 to 5 am March 27. An autopsy report became the only chance for the family to find out the truth. It's due to be released this month. This is at least the second time in a year that Chinese people used the Internet to challenge law enforcement authorities for the truth behind their relatives' death in detention centers. Another inmate, Li Qiaoming, in Kunming, capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan, who allegedly died during a "hide-and-seek" game on February 8, was later proved to have been beaten to death by another three inmates. Tang Lan, deputy chief of the Information and Social Development Department of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said that from "playing hide-and-seek" to "having a nightmare", these fishy analyses receiving public exposure not only showed the rising power of Internet in upholding democracy but also revealed deeper problems facing China's development. "These problems have nothing to do with economic expansion but might jeopardize the health of Chinese economy if not being tackled properly. To have the market forces go a long way, I think China needs a more forceful framework cemented by democracy and science," he said. COMMEMORATING HISTORY Nearly a century ago, democracy and science were totally exotic for the Chinese. Avant-garde urban intellectuals brought them in and personalized them as Mr. De and Mr. Sai because their literal translation in Chinese sound respectively like De-mo-ke-la-xi and Sai-yin-si. This triggered the New Culture Movement (1915-21) which called for the creation of a new Chinese culture based on western standards especially democracy and science and climaxed with the May Fourth Movement. Hearing that the then government bowed to the Treaty of Versailles, more than 3,000 students from Peking University and other schools hit the street on May 4, 1919, asking for the return to China of the territory and rights of Shandong, which Japan had taken from Germany during the World War I. Now, May Fourth is officially observed as the Youth Day in China to commemorate the awakening of the young Chinese in fighting for China's rise from oppression and humiliation. |
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