Would re-education Xinjiang-style be a better solution for Zhang Zhan?

An organisation called Chinese Human Rights Defenders, and The Hong Kong Apple Daily, have recently reported on the four year sentencing of freelance and Epoch Times journalist Zhang Zhan for spreading misinformation abroad about the Wuhan COVID outbreak. While this is unfortunate if true, there is one critically relevant piece of information that is omitted from the Apple Daily and CHRD reporting. It is of primary relevance to the matter: Is Zhang Zhan religious, and specifically and especially - is she Falun Gong/Dafa?

If Zhang is Falun Gong or another kind of faithist memetic delusional, then a very sound recommendation is that an appeal be made (if this is currently possible) on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to mental ill health and psychotic delusions. If Zhang Zhan is NOT religious and not a fideistic delusional, and is not otherwise of unsound mind, then she was using extremely bad judgement. Is this why she is no longer a lawyer, perhaps? It is hard to see how Zhan could have made decisions that bad without being in poor mental health, delusional, and split from reality to a significant extent.

Why is the faith and religious disposition of Zhang so important in this context? It is directly related to not only her personal mental health, but to the broader problem of the conflagratory misrepresentation and misuse of the concept of freedom of religion by the West when referring to the CCP. Especially by The United States Department of State.

Freedom of Religion Vs Prevailing Religionist Domination and Bigotry

There is a common conceptual and ideological blind spot that is demonstrated by pro-religious, para-religionist (providing ancillary cultural, material, and social support for religion), and meta-religious (being religious about the positive value of religion) secularists in the West. It is characterised by the apparent failure to recognise irreligion, and scientistic, materialistic atheism, as legitimate world views and ideological dispositions.

Such views are instead constantly maligned with the kind of McCarthyist, and medieval crusader-like, fervour that Michael Pompeo effuses using duplicitous, and equivocating, rhetoric. That rhetoric, and the narrative it supports, are really intended to promote what is in fact religionist, and religious, dominance, rather than freedom of religion.

Freedom of religion, and religious dominance and bigotry, are not the same thing.

The CCP, understandably, do not allow delusional, and fanatical, faith-cult bigots to run things. They do not laud bizarre, bigoted, fundamentalist delusions, such as those of Christian cultists Senator Pompeo and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, as a cultural and civic virtue. Such views are instead more soberly and rightly seen by the CCP as a sad affectation and psychological crutch: something unfortunate but unavoidable, to be tolerated pragmatically.

Does the CCP allow freedom of religion? Resoundingly, and obviously: yes. Does it allow prevailing memetic group delusions promoting social instability and based upon blatant faith based bigotry? Absolutely not. Nor should it. Does it permit violent memetically-inspired religious terrorism? Of course not. However, there is no reliable evidence that any of the measures taken by the CCP in the province of Xinjiang are anything like the measures taken by the US against ISIS and Middle Eastern Jihadists, and against, for example, David Koresh and the Branch Davidian cult in 1993.

The CCP is almost unfailingly polite to religious people, and demonstrates high levels of religious tolerance in China and abroad. However, there is very little tolerance and forbearance offered to the atheistic and irreligious CCP by Western progressive and para-religious secularists.

This is a mistake for many reasons, not least of which is that not all of the atheist and irreligious disposition of the CCP is grounded in Marxist and Leninist thought. Much of it is simply progressive and scientistic. Even so, there is nothing wrong with the Marxist and Leninist expression of scientistic materialism, since the CCP’s interpretation of Lenin’s scientistic naturalism is intended, and expected, to be subject to revision on the basis of new scientific information and discoveries. Much of this progressive revising and updating has gone on for decades unabated, resulting in a very mature scientific and civic-scientistic episteme, and in sound scientific methodologies. This is partly the cause, along with older Chinese ideologies, of the enormous success of China as a mercantile, scientific, and military power. (This is almost certainly the real source of US anxiety.)

Who really cares about what?

The initiatives and imperatives of Falun Gong/Dafa and their mouthpiece The Epoch Times have nothing to do with freedom of religion, which the CCP/PRC already endorses and supports.

They have everything to do, instead, with the destabilisation of Chinese society by group-delusional, infectious pseudo-informational (fiction based) memetic bigotry and religionistic dominionism. Falun Gong and Christian cults are both infused with the ideology that religion should rule all, including rule by specific, intrinsically bigoted, religious doctrines. This unbalanced view is what is aggravated by the US propaganda machine. This is something that free-speaking CCP citizen-spokeswoman Nian Zhen (https://twitter.com/@Xhinua_1988) has reminded us is about attacking and destabilising China’s social and civil centre of gravity. Secretary Michael Pompeo is not defending religious freedom at all. He is only attacking China and Chinese society and culture, and especially Chinese CCP atheists.

The CCP demonstrates real commitment to material initiatives that can make a difference to Chinese people. Cults like Christianity and Falun Gong, on the other hand, seem obsessed instead with perpetuating their delusional bigotry at the expense of any earthly benefits to anyone. Poverty alleviation is just one example.

There may well be a wealth distribution imbalance that has to be addressed in China. However, Falun Gong and Christian cultists seem comparatively, and even completely, disinterested in it. Xi and the CCP, by contrast, have recently demonstrated strong resolve in this area by emphasising anti-poverty initiatives, and even by heavily reigning in Jack Ma's Ant Financial.

As maligned as the atheist CCP are by the West: they are evidently doing far more to control poverty than anyone Michael Pompeo or Falun Gong endorse. Pompeo's delusional thinking is grounded in the dismal pre-medieval beliefs that the poor will always be with us, and that the best people can hope for is an afterlife. He comparatively rarely, if ever, mentions US poverty alleviation from his social media podium at The US Department of State. Falun Gong is every bit as ideologically useless and nonsensical as Pompeo's cult is in material terms, and has no real, valuable, material solutions for anyone: not even good personal management with respect to the psychology of the emotions and mental hygiene.

What to do about Zhang Zhan?

Zhang Zhan may well be rightly classifiable as a victim of the misinformation, and of the delusional, infectious memetic narratives, of such cult organisations as the Epoch Times and Falun Gong. If this is the case – and I think that there is extremely good reason to believe it is – perhaps there is some hope that the CCP might be able to show some mercy and leniency.

Instead of a custodial sentence, perhaps the public security bureau and courts might allow Zhang Zhan to complete a shorter program of re-education and deprogramming similar to that available in Xinjiang? One reason why this might be a superior approach is that it demonstrates confidence on the part of the CCP in their much maligned, but socially superior (to US style militaristic interventions), Xinjiang re-education programs. Additionally, it would avoid making a martyr out of Zhang at a time when this is quite unnecessary, and may well be counterproductive (the CCP is polling high support from the Chinese people due to the threats of the US). It is possible that using a heavy hand to handle Zhang – a person who is probably not only sick but also embodies the narratives of fear of the alleged heavy-handedness of the CCP - might only serve to strengthen the group-delusional memetic narratives of the Epoch Times, and the delusional, sensationalist, fundamentalist-cult-inspired ravings of Senator Michael Pompeo.

It might also be an expression of trust in the intelligence and wisdom of the Chinese people, whom the CCP has been successfully educating out of both material and intellectual poverty for half a century, and who have been giving the CCP resounding support in reliable polls.

That being said, it is clear that Zhang's actions were ill-advised and conflagratory. They came at a time when a hyper-aggressive and duplicitous US and UK-Commonwealth are willfully, opportunistically, and irresponsibly ignoring the full context and history of the situations in Taiwan and Hong Kong. It came also while the US was aggressively and disingenuously blaming China for the misfortune of being ground zero for a terrible zoonotic virus that killed many unfortunate local people.

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