“I don’t mean we cannot attack the party. Why can’t we attack it? But everybody thinks the evil of the nation is caused by an institution when, in reality, everybody is an accomplice,” he says. “In the near future, it’s impossible to change the institution. So we need to change the people. And if we can change the people, then the party will change.”
... It’s possible, he explains, that the passers-by really didn’t notice Yueyue, who later died. “I believe their explanation, because if you are not careful enough, you may indeed miss the girl lying on the ground.” His point is that, in an uncaring society, misfortune becomes invisible.
If some things make him despair, is he also inspired? I wonder what he thought of the villagers of Wukan who last year organised their own elections after protesting against what they said was the illegal seizure of land. “In Wukan’s case, I see the light on the road to China’s future democracy,” he says more emphatically than I had expected. “My view is we can have elections in some cities first. I wrote a blog called ‘Let Elections Start for Some People,’” he says, a clever reference to Deng Xiaoping’s famous aphorism, “Let some people get rich first.” “I don’t expect China to have a general election tomorrow, but I do think we can have elections in some developed cities as a test.”
full interview www.ft.com
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