Humbled Authority
May 29, 2008
This picture is of a communist party official begging grieving mothers of the Sichuan earthquake to end their protest over corruption and ineptitude that contributed to the deaths of their children.
Photo credit: Shiho Fukada
Source: New York Times
HT: Western Confucian, The American Conservative
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Wow..
I wonder if there will be political changes after all of this? For a Communist Official to beg? Wow is right.
Actually, this is par on course in China, except, of course, it is only sub-officials who have to beg. The people above them don’t.
Remember the guy who was executed because of the tainted meat?
Actually, the man at the top, Premier Wen, had to beg, too. As one of my correspondents reported: [I]t’s interesting to see how Premier Wen responded to the disaster. Within an hour of hearing about it, he was on a plane.
Perhaps more significant, upon approaching a school that had buried 100s of students alive, he was faced by the locals who were complaining about government buildings that were still standing, while schools were poorly constructed (thus indicating some kind of corruption).
His response was quite un-communist, or rather very Confucian: He bowed three times towards the dead. http://orientem.blogspot.com/2008/05/premier-wen-jiabao-in-sichuan.html