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Friday 22 July 2011

Quotations from Ran Yunfei (Part Two)

As at the date this translation project started, twitterer @wuxinkuaiyu had tweeted 65 quotations from the detained dissident writer. Here are the second batch of the quotations translated into English.

Translated by @sikoalice
Proofread and modified by @krizcpec @gaodawei

21. 打着国家的旗号,干着恶浊的勾当,这是我们生活中常见的例子。国家只是为所有个人服务的工具,舍此国家没有任何作用,或者国家的存在意义将化为乌有。也就是说,我们不能用神化国家来损害个人利益。
Translation: Dirty business done in the name of the state is no rarity in China's national life. A state is just a tool for serving all the individuals in it; it has no other function, or it has no reason for being. In other words, we should not harm the the interests of individuals merely for the sake of deifying the state.

22. 中国几千年来,公权力世袭化,没有像今天这样普遍化,遍及生活的各个角落的。如官员的学历文凭之滥,到了令人惊讶的地步,这在科举考试时代都没有发生过的事情,却在今天畅行无阻,谁说共产党领导的中国一定胜过古代,那就是睁眼说瞎话。
Translation: Throughout thousands of years of Chinese history, the inheritance of govenment power by the children of officials was never so common as it is today. It affects every aspect of our lives. The public is shocked that the faking of the officials' diplomas and certificates is so common. These ugly things that didn't occur under the imperial examination system face no resistance today. Whoever says that the China under the rule of the Communist Party is better off than the China in ancient times is telling an out-and-out lie.

23. 中国百姓的胆小、懦弱、苟且可谓有名,他们深知专制者的厉害,所以不到万不得已,他们绝不会起来维权。不少人完全是被逼上梁山,他们走完了所有的渠道,无法解决,要么被折腾而死,要么活得憋屈绝望,活在人间遭罪。只有少数人像杨佳一样,出现鱼死网破的多败结局。
Translation: We can say the Chinese people are famous for their timidity, cowardice, and degradation. Knowing very well how ruthless the despot can be, they do not stand up and fight for their own rights until the very last moment. Many people are forced to fight only after they had exhausted every other channel without getting their problems resolved. They may either die from physical or mental suffering or live in pain and despair. Very few have the guts to do what Yang Jia did - fighting to the bitter end with the authorities and ending up in a situation in which all parties lost.

24. 当下中国没有信仰,没有普世价值观,只有金钱至上、利益万能,实用主义雷同到令人伤心的地步,这绝对不是一个健康的社会所当有。所有不违宪不违法的理想,都应该给予尝试的机会,这个社会才有未来。
Translation: In China today, there is no religious faith or universal values. What rules nearly everyone to a very discouraging extent is a kind of pragmatism that “Money comes first” and “interests are everything”. This is not what a healthy society should be. Our society will have a future only when every ideal that does not violate the constitution or the law is given a chance to succeed.

25. 现今的中国教育特别是大学教育不及民国教育远甚,民国是教授治校,现在是党棍治校和特务管理,这就是绝大的差别。不解决制度革新问题,在党棍治校和特务管理下,要出世界一流大学实在是自我意淫。
Translation: Today’s Chinese education, especially university education, falls far short of what it was in the Republican era (1911 - 1949). In those days, universities were run by the faculty. Now they are run by party cadres and spies. There is no bigger difference than this. Without solving the problems of reforming the system, in a system that is ruled by party hacks and spies, the dream of creating a world class university in China will remain just an act of intellectual masturbation.

26. 垄断是我们生活中的祸根,不仅是政治领域,在经济领域也是如此。像所有国企一样,凡是被垄断的行业,就成了行业的小金库,成了官员贪腐的武库,民众只有被剥夺的份儿。名为国企,实则是用国企的名义,变相地抢劫民众利益。
Translation: Monopoly is the bane of our lives, not only in the political arena but in the economic one as well. Just like all the state-owned enterprises, all the monopolized industries become merely sources of slush funds in that industry, and financial arsenals for corrupt officials. The public is exploited and can do nothing about it. The officials status of the so-called state-owned enterprises is only a cover for the looting the public interest.

27. 需要群众来打帮捶的时候,来替他们造势的时候,就说“群众的眼睛是雪亮的”;当民众要主张他们的利益,起来反抗官方镇压的时候,他们不仅是不明真相的群众,而且不管多少,都是一小撮。
Translation: When they need to use the public to hammer its opponents, the Chinese Communist Party would say “the people's eyes are sharp”; when the public calls for its rights and stands up against official oppression, the CCP would say that they are only a crowd with no understanding of reality and call them just a tiny fraction of the people no matter how many people are standing together.

28. 社会制度有问题,不仅没能有效地阻止贫富悬殊的增加,而且在财富的再度分配和社会保障上做得相当差,这就容易使有话语权的写作者去神化弱势者,最差的结果便是有的人用弱势者所具备的道德同情优势来煽动暴力,谋取自身利益最大化,暴力革命的号召者无不如是。
Translation: The social system has problems. Not only has it failed to prevent the increase in the gap between rich and poor, but it also has done a terrible job on wealth redistribution and social security. This makes it easy for those writers who have the right to speak out to adulate the disadvantaged. The worst result is when people use public sympathy for the disadvantaged to instigate violence in a way that best serves their own interests. That is exactly what all who call for violent revolution do.

29. 说中国的教育混蛋都不足以表达我的心情,有许多人都不想表达意见了,认为中国的教育实在太混蛋。在涉及到教育诸方面的官员实际利益时,在涉及到有关他们增加收入的改革时,搞得迅如虎豹,在涉及实行应该免费的义务教育方面,教育部门的各级官员,他们却慢如蜗牛。
Translation: Condemning the state of Chinese education is far from enough to express the way I feel. Many people don't want to express their opinions because they think Chinese education really stinks. When a reform affects the real interests of educational officials or can increase their own incomes, they react as quickly as tigers. But when it comes to implementing free compulsory education, officials at all levels involved in education move as slowly as snails.

30. 不用谩骂的方式,不妖魔化不诬蔑对方,不要与对方比谁更暴力,不要模仿对方不堪的思维。比如用共产党的方式批评共产党,就是一种预先的失败。你可以批评毛泽东号召我们学雷锋是愚民,但你不可以说毛泽东是个傻逼,这种骂人的话没有任何力量。
Translation: Don't resort to vituperation, demonizing or insulting your opponent. Don't compete to see who is more violent, don't imitate your opponent’s nasty way of thinking. Using the means adopted by the Communist Party to criticize the Communist Party is doomed to fail. You can criticize Mao for idiotizing the people when he asked them to learn from Lei Feng, but you can never say Mao himself was an idiot. This kind of criticism just doesn't carry any weight.

31. 敏感期越来越多,最终会弄成每个日子都敏感;敏感词汇像蝗虫一样蔓延,最终会让每个字都成为他们的心腹之患。
Translation: There are always more and more politically sensitive dates. In the end every single day will become sensitive. With the number of sensitive words increasing like locusts, ultimately every single word will become a scourge in the rulers' eyes.

32. 作家流沙河先生对赵藩联的改作,更是治理今之蜀乱以及中国之乱的不二窍门:能富民则反侧自消,从古安邦须饱肚;不遵宪即宽严皆误,后来治国要当心。
Translation: The modification the writer Liushahe made to the couplet by Zhao Fan shows the best solution to the recent turmoil in Sichuan and across the country. The modified couplet suggests that so long as the people can be made wealthy, rebellion will naturally fade away. From ancient times, the basis of social stability has been to keep the people's stomachs full. Future rulers should bear in mind that failing to comply with the constitution results in inappropriate actions whether the country is governed strictly or not.

33. 不在制度上进行改革,你就是再花费纳税人巨大的血汗钱,到北京去洗脑也没有用。不进行制度改革,各级政府权力不受制约与监督,官员们的贪婪无度,使得他们不可能真正为民众着想,会导致与民众利益严重冲突,而这样的冲突才是对“稳定压倒一切”僵化管理模式的最大冲击。
Translation: Without reform to the regime, nothing can be accomplished regardless of how much of the taxpayers' blood and sweat money is spent, not matter how much you send them to Beijing to get brainwashed. Without reform to the regime, and without restrictions and oversight imposed on government power at all levels, the insatiable greed of officials will prevent them from truly considering the interests of the public. This will lead to conflicts of interest with the people that will be a big blow to the fossilized, rigid management method of "stability is more important than anything else".

34. 红歌充满非此即彼、仇恨教育、逻辑混乱、情感错位等,不仅在学校教育中盛行,而且在大众日常生活中也非常普及,最后连精神病人也不放过…一方面大力强调和谐社会,另一方面又不遗余力地灌输红歌里面的阶级斗争思想,这就是当轴的精神分裂。
Translation: Red songs convey a black and white “either this or that” outlook, are an education in hatred, illogic, and confused emotions. These songs prevail not only in school but also in the daily life of the general public. Even the mentally ill are not spared them. The rulers on the one hand place huge emphasis on creating a harmonious society, and on the other make every effort to spread the class struggle way of thinking conveyed by the red songs. This is the schizoid thinking of our government leaders.

35. 互联网在各种利益部门虎视耽耽的情况下,在各级政府的空前打压下,还是有些许缝隙让当轴头疼。因为当轴并不想你监督他,所以当你真正行使宪法、法律赋予你的权利的时候,他便采取一系列的方式来围堵来掩盖,希图让自己的恶行蒙混过关。
Translation: The Internet, despite close surveillance by the various stake-holding departments, and unprecedented repression by all levels of governments, offers a few glimpses of the outside world and so gives the authorities a headache. Government leaders are unwilling to accept your oversight, so when you excercise the rights that the PRC Constitution and the laws give you, the authorities come up with various measures to block you all the while concealing what they are doing. They hope that they can get away using these false pretences to prevent you from exercising your rights.

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