By Jerome A. Cohen
Here is an extraordinary essay that was shared before it was quickly removed from WeChat (translated by David Cowhig). It’s a good thing it’s so long. Otherwise it would not have lasted two hours! Many China-watchers will find it a worthy read. It is, of course, the seldom-published weeping of many law professors whose voices have been silenced, not only at one of China’s major law schools – Tsinghua. I wonder whether Professor Lao, a younger scholar whom I did not know during my 2002-3-4-5 autumn semesters teaching there, will now suffer the fate of her former colleague, the ex-communicated, shunned and impoverished Professor Xu Zhangrun, who is being quietly and informally but severely punished for his brilliant and courageous critiques of Xi Jinping’s repression.
This essay is not only about the plight of legal scholars, lawyers, free speech and the abuse of criminal justice. It is a Chinese intellectual’s effort to confront contemporary life. It is also a meditation on arriving at middle age (recall the PRC movie from the early post-1979 era “Ren Dao Zhongnian”) and on the responsibilities of raising children to cope with the contradictions of China’s present political, social and economic environment. Professor Lao offers many admirable sentences, and I like her concluding quotation of J.K.Rowling’s speech to Harvard graduates, which urges a path that we all might well follow.