Last week I touched on the subject of Charter 08 and an article by Catherine Sampson. At the time I was under the impression that the Charter was not available to netizens in China, and I criticized the Chinese authorities accordingly. I ought therefore to offer them an apology, as one of my colleagues very quickly directed me to a site where the Charter can be read in Chinese, English and French, and commented upon.
I hope it will continue to be available there, and I plan to return to the subject next week in an article that will try to give Charter 08 some of the attention it merits. However, having had a chance to study the document in some detail, I have a brief piece of advice in the interim for Catherine Sampson, as one of the Charter's Champions:
Do not under any circumstances show Charter 08 to the British Prime Minister, Mr. Gordon Brown, unless you want him to have a whey-faced apoplectic fit. Much of the document is likely to cause his eyes to bulge and his breath to come in short gasps, but in particular, kindly refrain from drawing his attention to the section on "Democracy" while mentioning the name "Peter Mandelson".
"The stultifying results… endemic official corruption… decay in public ethics… We reiterate and endorse basic universal values as follows… The holders of major official posts in government at all levels are determined through periodic competitive elections..." (Charter 08)
Peter Mandelson may be known to some Chinese readers. He even managed to earn himself a little superficial popularity here after a recent milk-drinking incident, although the whole thing may in fact have been a ploy to mock the Chinese. In the UK, he is rather less popular with the public.
He was brought into the Government last October as "Minister for Business". On the face of it this is surprising, as he has never run a company or even worked in one – a brief stint working as a producer for a television company (a post for which he seems to have been entirely unqualified) hardly counts as a proper job. But it is even more surprising given that he has had to be sacked from the government on two previous occasions for dishonesty.
"The stultifying results… decay in public ethics…" (Charter 08):
The first time was for lying about money. While Trade Secretary (a British Cabinet post) he secretly borrowed nearly four hundred thousand pounds from a millionaire ministerial colleague, Geoffrey Robinson, whose business affairs were at the time under investigation by a government department – Mr. Mandelson's. He also failed to disclose this secret loan on a mortgage application, and lied to his colleagues about it and to anyone else who could be persuaded to listen to him. It's hard now to get full contemporary accounts of the affair, but you can read about it here.
Telling lies on a mortgage application is a criminal offence (fraud) in the UK, but clearly as a Labor Grandee Mr. Mandelson was exempt from the laws that apply to the rest of the British public. He did get sacked though, something that is no longer likely to happen in today's more relaxed environment.
