Open letter to all mainland students: You should defend freedom 

EDITOR's NOTE: Xiaotangshan is the site of a hospital built in 7 days in 2003 to divert some of the SARS patients from Beijing. Xi Jinping wants to break that record and build a new one in 6 days.

(30 Jan) According to the lunar calendar, today is the fourth day of the New Year. First of all, we wish everyone a Happy Lunar New Year in (mainland) China. Of course, some friends, especially those from Hubei, may not be so cheerful. “Plague in Wuhan,” “Lock down Hubei” have become the hottest keywords for friends from Hubei or even across the country. In recent days, I have noticed that everyone is collecting signatures. Let me chime in a couple words. I am not any noteworthy person. Like everyone else, I'm just a very ordinary mainland student. It all started when a classmate from Tsinghua University and a double major student from Normal University argued that soft quarantine is a form of discrimination. But is this really discrimination?

The leaked Hubei video series “Step on someone even if I die” has flashed in my mind countless times. Just because someone was infected, he spat in public places, coughed hard, and plied open protective clothing of doctors in the high-risk zones in a hospital, just to get the doctor infected, too. The plague has taken off the last disguise of a twisted society that has long been restrained. People begin to tear down the mask given by the system and culture. (Hark! Politics has nothing to do with me. You see the shootings in the U.S. all day long? Taiwan is even more rotten than China.)

I also can’t forget the news on “Wuhan needing to learn from Xiaotangshan to build a combat hospital in 6 days.” I never know why those suspected SARS patients entered Xiaotangshan in 2003 never came back out, just like you don’t. I couldn’t help but wonder, “Is soft, voluntary quarantine really discrimination?” If the US put Chinese who entered the US from Hubei into hard quarantine, would that be discrimination?

Do you still remember those mainland students who tore down the Lennon walls? I still remember that the last instance of Lennon wall teardown in Taiwan was before a Tsinghua student went home. In this age that “People’s Republic of China can be devastated by an epidemic,” those who are born in China are meant to go through more hardship and carry on more public responsibilities and duties than others. I can never forget, during World War II, the story of Japanese Americans who threw themselves into the Pacific War to defend their freedom, or those German Americans volunteered to resist Nazi flanks in the Europe theatre. That was the best freedom people could fight for in their time.

I seem to see the late Qing Dynasty in the middle of the Wuhan Pneumonia epidemic. After years of wars and unrest, neither the Eight-Nation Alliance nor compensatory land cession could be the last straw that broke the back of the Qing Dynasty. But an epidemic gave the final blow. An epidemic in people’s minds made the Qing Dynasty lose their self-proclaimed legitimacy. It then truly realised the republic, and progressed towards the most important and the most glorious moment in the history of Asians.

Even though... that was history.

After that, the image of “Chinese” was changed to a certain extent internationally, but descended to a new low under the US sanctions after the birth of People’s Republic of China. No one could change much. We all are victims of being unwillingly represented by a strong People’s Republic of China as part of a large population base with an average education level. No matter how you spin it, those who were born in China are destined to be represented by a handful of Chinese who are rowdy and unreasonable. The only language they understand is fist and violence. This is the best moment that I learned from this world with a messed-up China.

Choose change or conservation. I think, in the remaining time, it will be the question that every mainland student— every Chinese— asks himself. Especially since the previous generation didn’t make the effort, this generation needs to work harder. If we can change in this generation, why leave the works to the next?

The history of China in this century is about time to be written by each and every one of us.

(Universal value is meant to help people from authoritarian countries that have no democracy. But it shouldn’t become a reason to sabotage freedom and security. )

Source: Facebook Diary of Jiabao (家賓日記)

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=619142568917362&id=100024648743296