(Clearwisdom.net) When the word "politics" is mentioned, many Chinese people feel resentment or fear. Westerners may have a hard time understanding why. In the West, just about anything that is not religion can be considered political. In Chinese, two characters comprise the word for politics, "zheng zhi." Many Chinese may not know that in ancient China, "zheng" meant "administration, laws and public policy" and "zhi" meant "govern, manage, harness." The two terms were often used separately and both contained elevated moral significance. It's only recently that people put the two words together.
During the Three Emperors Era and the Five Lords Ruling in Chinese history, the country was ruled with high moral principles, following the emperor's understanding of God's will. Later, "zheng" became power, system, order and law, morality and accomplishments. In the Analects of Confucius, "zheng" refers to officials being upright. In Mozi's book, "zhi" means managing and teaching the people in order to realize a peaceful and stable society.
In classic Confucius literature, they talked about how to rule well and how to teach the people moral principles. The greatest emperors were those who enforced justice on behalf of Heaven. They showed utter reverence for Gods and affection for their people.
It was the same way in the West. Aristotle once said "The aim of politics is to seek righteousness." The ancient Greeks believed that the meaning of life was to carry out morality in public activities.
In China today, "zheng zhi" has a twisted connotation . There is no morality in it whatsoever. The history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the history of rule-by-violence, blood, and forcing people to be a part of different "political movements." Hence, when "politics" is mentioned, everyone thinks of miserable scenes in the Cultural Revolution, when father and son killed each other, and husband and wife fell out. In China, "politics" is about slaughtering college students in Tiananmen Square and all kinds of corruption and crimes in the bureaucracy.
The CCP, on the one hand, forces everyone to be a part of politics, while on the other hand, it forbids people from "playing politics." "Playing politics" or "getting involved in politics" is a synonym for anything considered to be anti-CCP or anti-government and should be relentlessly attacked and slandered. In the CCP's twisted propaganda, people are led to believe that politics in democratic countries is the same as in China. When someone stands up to disclose the persecution of the CCP, people are taught to believe that this is "getting involved in politics," something worthy of censure and punishment.
In the 11 years of the persecution of Falun Gong, the CCP is confirmed to have caused the untimely deaths of over 3,000 Falun Gong practitioners. The means of torture employed include the most evil recorded in history, and many practitioners' vital organs have been extracted from their living bodies for illegal sale.
Yet when practitioners stand up and tell people what the CCP did to them, many Chinese people believe that they are "playing politics."
Falun Gong practitioners risk their lives to tell people the facts of the persecution. They seek only an end to the persecution.
If practitioners' "telling people what really happened" is "playing politics" and such "playing politics" helps stop the CCP from killing more, isn't this really a great and worthy thing?
