Chinese Rhetoric and Writing - An Introduction for Language Teachers, 2012a

Chapter 9
The freedom and rights of the people guaranteed by these pacts
are important factors of civilization for which, throughout
history, many progressive forces have been striving and
their enactment can be of great assistance to the humanistic
development of our society. We therefore welcome the fact that
the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic has expressed adherence
to these pacts.
But their publication reminds us with new urgency how many
fundamental civil rights for the time being are—unhappily—
valid in our country only on paper. Completely illusory, for
example, is the right to freedom of expression, guaranteed by
article 19 of the first pact.
Contrast the comparatively measured tone here with the second paragraph of
Charter 08, the first sentence of which reads:
“The monumental historic transformation in the mid-nineteenth
century exposed the decay of the traditional Chinese despotic
system and ushered in the most “unprecedented and cataclysmic
change in several thousands of years” in all of China.”
Charter 08 then describes a series of reforms that were put in place during
the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The failure of these and
the “Party’s dominion” over the post 1949 “catastrophes” is clearly spelled out in
the final section of paragraph 3.
The “New China” established in 1949 is a “people’s republic”
in name only. In fact it is under the “Party’s dominion.” The
ruling power monopolizes all the political, economic and social
resources. It created a string of human rights catastrophes such
as the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, The
Cultural Revolution, June 4, and attacks on non-governmental
religious activities and on the rights defense movement, causing
tens of millions of deaths and exacted a disastrous price on the
people and the country.
The paragraphs following the opening three paragraphs of Charter 77 itemise
areas where the pacts signed by the Czechoslovak government have been broken.
However, the passive voice is used, and usually no agent is explicitly mentioned
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