Overcome FearYang Jianli (Speech at Harvard Kennedy School of Government Forum, Dec.5, 2007) In each Sunday service that I have attended since returning to the United States from my 5 years ordeal in China, our priest Leslie Sterling says “Dear Brothers and Sisters: Live without fear!” This simple but powerful blessing strikes a resounding chord in my heart each time I hear it. My five-year imprisonment was a fear-overcoming experience, which deepened my understanding of how fear works to subdue prisoners, and, further, how an autocracy, which can be considered a prison at large, employs fear to make people’s minds captive minds. I have come to realize that to end a dictatorship we must begin with efforts to end deep-rooted fear in ourselves and in the people whose freedom we are fighting for. Look at these methods, which the prison authorities applied against me or my inmates: stark-naked violence and intimidation of the use of violence, demonstration of omnipotence of arbitrary persecution, degradation and humiliation, isolation, monopolization of perception and brainwashing, harassment and psychological torture, induced debility and exhaustion, occasional indulgence, enforcing trivial demands, arbitrary intrusion of privacy, and so on and so forth. In a broader sense, the Chinese regime uses the same tactics to create fear and then compliance among the Chinese people. As a result, fear permeates. Everybody under the regime is filled with fear. Fear of persecution, imprisonment, and death for voicing dissents or just for telling the truth, fear of losing job or other means of living, fear of being banned from publishing, fear of bringing troubles to family and affecting the future of children…. Fear becomes habit and habit becomes second nature. Fear is internalized to the degree that people sometimes do not even feel fear but always know how to behave and not cross the lines. A number of recent surveys conducted by foreign scholars wrongly revealed 60, 70 or even up to 80% of supporting rates of the Chinese government among the Chinese citizens. The surveys misrepresented the real situation just because the scholars overlooked this very fundamental psychological state of the Chinese populace. The Chinese regime is able to continue its rule not because the Chinese people love autocracy but because, as in any dictatorship, they trapped in a collective action dilemma: everybody, fearing that the cost of resistance is far more damaging to his situation than capitulation, wants others, and not themselves, to take action to bring an end to the unpopular regime, although he wants to see its fall. Collective action dilemma may not be the worst part of reality in China. Pervasive fear with selective repression and selective indulgence induces cooperation, and then voluntary cooperation and finally willing accomplices. It is common in Chinese prisons that prisoners offer help to the guards to repress other inmates exchanging for favors. Almost every device of torture in prison is invented and made by prisoners and almost all prison regulations are drafted by prisoners. We can see that the Chinese elites have been caught in a situation similar to the Prisoners’ dilemma and, because of this, the Chinese regime has been able to co-opt them and shore up its powerbase. We hope for but cannot rely on the Chinese autocratic rulers’ initiative to open up the field of political rights. A democratic transition in China is more likely to come as a logical result of the growth of people’s democratic forces. But the collective action dilemma and the prisoners’ dilemma described above constitute major hindrance on the road and the deep-rooted fear is their underlying spell. To break the dilemmas we must break the spell of fear. I think every fear consists of three components which I call spiritual fear, material fear and self-imposed fear. Spiritual fear is fear that can be overcome spiritually by ideas, beliefs, and heroic actions. The Chinese leading democrats, one generation after another, stood up for their ideas and beliefs. Their heroic actions and the ordeals they endured revealed again and again the truth “The biggest fear is fear itself.” They have not only morally encouraged many to follow their cause but also paved the way for their followers to more easily apply the domestic and international pressures which have pushed the Chinese regime to make concessions. So we must encourage more heroic actions, promote publicities for them and propagate their impact on the Chinese society as a whole. I experienced spiritual fear myself. When the Chinese authorities first brought groundless charges against me, I had fear. I feared that the espionage charge might tarnish my name and that I might end up in prison for a long time with that serious charge. But during an interrogation, a police officer, knowing that I was a Christian, asked me to pray for his family and expressed his sympathy to my situation by saying “A good person like you shouldn’t have such a bad future.” His words opened my heart and vision. I might not be as good as he thought I would be but, to be sure, I was innocent and the Chinese authorities had more fear than I did. They feared my return to China and they brought a bad name on me because they feared my good name. I was a formidable force to the Chinese autocratic regime. Why should I fear?! So I said this in the court “No matter how long I will be sentenced, I will stay in prison until the last day to enjoy the right to move freely in China, my beloved homeland. During my imprisonment, I will reject any arrangement to expatriate me even if it is based on good will.” I made my words good by rejecting an early release on the condition to leave China right after. I had gradually overcome the fear spiritually and reaffirmed my old belief “Courage is not without fear, but to choose to do the right thing even with fear.” Material fear, the second component of fear, is concrete and can be overcome but by external reduction of actual costs: the severity of persecution. Everybody has a reason to fear because everybody might have something to lose, real or perceived. Again, my experience. When the police blindfolded me upon my escorted arriving in Beijing from Kunming where I had been first detained, fear sent chill to my bones: What are they going to do to me? Are they going to kill me? I began praying to God. I was sent to a nearly 15 months solitary confinement where I was totally cut off from any meaningful human contact and reduced to animal level physical life with tremendous human worries and anxieties. I was forced to sit up and look straight without moving four hours a day, and was not allowed to go out for fresh air or sunshine for several stretches, the longest lasting nearly 8 months. Besides, I was constantly subjected to psychological torture inflicted by the interrogators. In the beginning I was only able to muster courage enough not to corporate but no more. Yet when I was informed of the outpouring of support for me from outside, I was greatly encouraged to protest because I knew I was not alone, I was not forgotten and, with so many people around the world standing behind me, I could bear the pain. I began to stage the first of a series of protests and successfully ended the forced sitting up practice in the detention center. My experience shows that the support from outside world can help reduce the cost and risk the democracy activists may have to face. In fact, the Chinese regime has become increasingly worried about its international image, your voice can be heard even in Chinese prison cells and when it is heard change is quietly made. The third component of fear, self-imposed fear, is self evident and it can be reduced or overcome through education. The climate of tension created by autocratic rulers readily produces and reproduces fear to the extent that fear itself is a major source of fear. In many cases risk is much lower than perceived and fear can be seen as imaginary. For any autocratic ruler, generating self-imposed fear is the most cost-effective way to maintain its rule and, unfortunately, often times people unwittingly contribute to the consolidation of an autocracy by simply exaggerating its strength and acting accordingly. Much self-imposed fear will be dispersed if the ordinary Chinese people understand that the Chinese regime is actually on the defense in the battle field of human rights. The rulers, with so many human rights violations, have more reasons to fear than we do. The best strategy is to move little by little to touch the boundary of freedom and little by little push it outward. I believe that we, who enjoy freedom of speech and who stand to incur the least cost, if any, for criticizing an autocratic regime, have the responsibility to help educate the Chinese people by speaking out the truth. But some American scholars have exercised self-imposed censorship when conducting their China studies and abstained from voicing their views on China. Their messages have been misleading to both the Chinese people and the international community. They act in this manner out of fear, self-imposed fear. They are fearful of being banned from study in China, of losing the access, or the competition to others for the access, to the top Chinese leaders, of losing the prestige, or the competition to others for the prestige, the Chinese regime confers on them. They, too, run into a collective action dilemma and a prisoners’ dilemma. I would have an uneasy feeling if I heard a Harvard professor saying “I cannot be critical because I want to maintain a good relationship with the Chinese government.” During the period of South African people’s struggle against apartheid, a great American citizen, Leon Sullivan, authored the Sullivan Principles to help the U.S. business community exercise their collective strength to defend fundamental values of human dignity. I respectfully suggest that the community of China scholars in the United States should do the same. When a member of this community is banned from entering China for his outspokenness, for example, what should other members do? I think we all know the answer. In prison, I respected everybody, inmates and guards, as a human being and offered them my knowledge and shared with them my democratic ideas. When my situation improved, I taught my inmates English, Mathematics, Economics, Logic, and Chinese calligraphy and I also coached a basketball team for three years until my last day there. My inmates gradually overcame their fear and joined in my work to bring about positive changes in prison, and some guards gradually overcame their fear and became my friends and, thanks to their sympathy and protection, I was able to organize a bible study group. My inmates overcame their fear because they saw me their protector, they saw some hope, and my guards overcame their fear because they saw me as an alternative, they saw an alternative future. They all began to see that our cause is right and just and the democracy activists represent a brighter future. I am here tonight not to tell you why democracy is good and why China needs a democratic order, I believe most of you are democracy lovers and are interested to see democracy take root in China. Instead, I want to share with you my views, based on my own experience, on how to help the Chinese people and even ourselves reduce or eradicate the deep rooted fear in the hearts which is the major obstacle on the road to collective wisdom and collective strength needed for a democratic transition in China. We should openly engage with the Chinese democratic forces both in and outside China, give them moral and material support, provide them with ideas and resources, bring their situation to the attention of the international community, speak the truth about China and the world, and provide protection to those in danger. All of these ideas and actions will contribute to the reduction of the cost and risk the democracy activists have to face. As fear lessens, more and more people will join the democratic forces. The collective action dilemma will consequently be solved. The growth of the democratic forces will go on to help break the prisoners’ dilemma because it will provide an alternative future to the Chinese ruling elites who will one after another split from the autocratic regime to join the democratic forces. Who, after all, wants to be on the losing side?!
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