Freedom of expression key to prosperity

It is unjust to denounce all informers, but the Chinese equivalent, gaomizhe, is usually used as a negative term for those who inform on others with an ax to grind. There are informers everywhere at any time. But what was really awful in history was the use of informants by rulers as a means to get to know what was on people's minds, or to be exact, the terror created among the public by the wide use of informants to hush the grievances.

The book Walls Have Ears by He Mufeng traces the history of informers in various dynasties in ancient China. The blood-stained history was actually not too remote. Ask people in their sixties or seventies, and their memories of the political movements in the decades before 1978 could always remind them of some informers.

What is particularly interesting is the relevance this writer has found between informers and autocratic rulers. He gives the example of how it was for the first time written into the national law that everyone in the State of Qin (770-256 BC) must inform on anyone who harbored resentment against its ruler and his policies.