THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
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Beijing fears unlimited freedom, but promotes happiness

Beijing fears unlimited freedom, but promotes happiness

Re: “What Beijing fears most? Freedom and true happiness” and “Ask the people of Tibet, HK and Xinjiang about ‘wonderful new China’”, Have Your Say, yesterday. 

I am glad that my letter was so interesting that it got no less than three responses yesterday.
The first was from Michael Setter, who stubbornly refuses to tear down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness and continues to accuse me of being paid by the Chinese Communist Party. In fact I am a professional, still earning 100K after retirement, who is inspired to defend China by the bitter history recounted by my father, as well my own extensive media reading. 
Setter declares that happiness is a spiritual matter of compassion and tolerance, yet he apparently fails to recall my letter describing how the CCP handed my ancestral home to poor Chinese homeless families – families who have since been able to afford homes of their own. Walled in by prejudice, Setter will never be able to understand how the CCP deprives a tiny segment of the population (in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang, according to Lungstib) of some degree of freedom, so as to keep the near 1.5-billion majority happy.
Lungstib takes issue with my assertion that, “Christian children in China have never been molested by clergy appointed by Beijing whereas children in the democratic world have been frequently molested by clergy appointed by the Vatican.” This is not an idea, but a genuine problem that even the Pope accepts, though cannot solve despite much effort.
Last but not least, Sukhumvit Bill reveals more factual evidence to support my view of Chinese suffering under Western and Japanese aggressors (“Anti-Chinese prejudice has a long history in the West”, yesterday). 
Having failed to poke holes in the walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness surrounding Have Your Say’s narcissistic scribes, I think it’s time I took a holiday. 
Prasan Stianrapapongs

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