The Principals and Struggle of the Non-violence Movement (III)

Yang, Jian-Li

3/14/2002

People suppressed by a dictatorship are always a majority compared with the dictators. But why, then, should the people obey the dictatorship? This is an old question that has been answered from different prospective. Some believe that it is a result of culture tradition; some say that is a product from lacking of knowledge inhuman rights; while others consider that it is the fear of the people that keeps one dictators in power.

The “fear” in people’s heart is, I believe, the root of the problem. I am not saying that the awareness of human rights are not important; but the common knowledge of human nature tells us that no one wants to live under gun point even in America where human rights are well aware of. Therefore, we need to evaluate the causes and the results of fear, as well as how to overcome it.

Dictators control people on individual bases so that it is always one against the dictator regime. This results in a dilemma of collective action. People can succeed if all are working together. However, one would suffer a lot if coming up alone against a dictator regime. When the suffering from being a dissident far surpass that from being ruled by a dictatorship, few would stand up for the challenge. Most would then hope to take a free ride with someone else. This thought, in turn, makes it very difficult for any individual to be a dissident because he/she could not be sure if anyone would follow. The final result will then seem that few are opposing the dictatorship and there could be no collective actions.

In order to be in power, a dictatorship will do everything to prevent any type of collective actions against the government. The will have to do the following three things:

1. Try to make the majority live in a condition that is better than staying in jail or being purged. The “right of survival” created by the present Chinese communist regime is a typical example.

2. Control information so that people may not know the whole truth for many things such as how other peoples are living their lives. More importantly, blocking information exchange makes the planning of any collective action against the dictatorship next to impossible. Over the past dozens of years, the Chinese government has been blocking free flow of information, which has impacted people’s vision about the truth of international and national affairs. As a result, many believe that the world super-power is an enemy and that corruption only happens locally, while most of the government officials are “model leaders” and good party members. A good example is that during the 3-year famine in late 1950s, most Chinese thought that the famine occurred only in their town and the rest of China was in the “communism heaven”.

3. Creating an atmosphere of national terrorism so that psychological fear is rooted in people’s heart.

Asking every citizen to be a hero is neither realistic nor appropriate. However, non-violence movement needs a group of leaders who are willing to sacrifice their own freedom even life against the dictatorship. Gundy once said “Violence advocates can be converted into non-violence advocates. But only those who do not have enough courage can not be converted.” Non-violence movement requires its leaders to be capable of detecting the limit of freedom under existing conditions and control the scale of the movement. The survival of dictatorship depends on not only creating national terrorism (using political and military power), but also the fear among people. The phenomenon of scaring ourselves is rather common among some recognized intellectuals. In the US, we often meet some Chinese visiting intellectuals. They tried very hard to avoid talking with dissidents even on non-political issues. The arrogance of the communist government grew with the “permeation” of the people. The “limit of freedom” is drawn not by the dictators alone, but by the balance of various social factors including the voices from the people. If we show our fear to the government, the limit will shrink. The recent breakthrough that Falungong practitioners made by broadcasting their believes over the controlled TV channels is very significant. It greatly encouraged the people who are struggling for free flow of information.

The leaders of non-violence movement should always consider how to reduce the risk while calling people to stand up and challenge the dictatorship. Only when the risk is constantly reduced, will there be more and more people joining the movement and we could then succeed. It should be pointed out that the struggle made and the price paid by generations after generations of dissidents have reduced the risk smaller and smaller, which makes it possible for the non-violence movement to be succeed in our generation.

Besides breaking down the barrier of the “psychological fear”, we need to consider from different angles about how to break the dilemma of collective action.

The first thing that we can do is to establish Internet based information exchange centers. One can imagine what could happen if all Chinese who are not satisfied with the government stand up at the same time and say “No!”. The key is that how can we get everyone to act at the same time. Of course, this is an ideal yet impossible case. I just want to emphasize the significance of free information exchange. The information passed via the “moon cake” by our ancestors to get people rebel at the same time is a good example. We should start to establish Internet based information exchange centers in each provinces and major cities. If it is difficult to do so in side China, may be we can set things up first here in the US. My organization and I are willing to help in whatever way we can.

A basic method used by the dictators is to divide people up and control them separately. When people are singled out as individuals, the power (if any) will be weak. What we need to do is to organize people together by establishing all necessary organizations such as workers union, student associations, anti-corruption alliances and etc.. It is better to start at the local level, then regional and finally national. Besides demanding justice from the government publicly, an atmosphere of sharing the risk also needs to be established. There are many ways to do this. For example, voice support to purged / detained activists, comfort and help their families and friends and ect.. When people realize that all of the risks (however big they are) would be shared, they will have stronger courage. This is what Mr. Ding Chu referred as “transforming individual courage into collective courage”.

Mr. Ding Chu also proposed another strategy that is worth of further consideration. It is called “transforming an organized dictatorship into individual parts”. Although a dictatorship may not have many individuals, it is an organized power who’s actions are often carried out in the name of the party or the government. Therefore, the risks of suppressive ruling are taken by the dictatorship as a whole, which has encouraged the Chinese communist Party (CCP) officials to do whatever they want without being punished individually. One of the key aspects of the non-violence movement is to create a “dilemma of collective action” for the dictators so that they will have to take the risk of ruling individually and be held responsible of what they have done as an individual. One thing should do is to collect information about CCP individual officials and achieve the information as evidence for future legal actions against each of them so that they can not avoid punishment by offloading responsibilities to the CCP or the ex-government.