[Radix] Any suggestions re Sichuan earthquake?

[George Kent]

Terry, calling for liberalization in broad terms might be  
counterproductive. I'd go for an approach that has the government set  
out good standards for school buildings, after appropriate  
consultations with experts, and then state that people have a right to  
have their schools meet these standards. Then provide ordinary people  
with the means for assessing the quality of their schools on at least  
some of the standards, and create some institutionalized mechanisms  
through which they can complain if they feel the standards are not met.

You could also offer to work with the government in developing this  
rights-based system of standards and accountability.

I used this approach in a talk I gave in China about food safety. It  
seemed to get a reasonably good reception--but of course nothing was  
done with the ideas.

I think we discussed these ideas on this list a couple of years ago.

Aloha, George



On Jan 8, 2009, at 1:38 PM, T.G.Cannon at greenwich.ac.uk wrote:

>  To that end, I propose to argue that the Chinese government should  
> actually support freedom of thought and information, and the right  
> to protest, because when citizens are free to do that (e.g against  
> local corruption) then these human rights would in fact be  
> supporting the governments capacity to protect its citizens. Does  
> that work?
>
> If there is time I will point out that the idea that states /  
> governments should protect their citizens is really a product of the  
> enlightenment and democracy, and that previously there was no  
> requirement for a ruling class or elite to even pretend that it was  
> doing anything other than serve itself.