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Academician's utterance on miner death booed
(zonaeuropa.com)
Updated: 2005-12-17 09:11 Here is the talk of the town from Southern
People's Weekly magazine. The interviewee is He Zuoxiu, a famous intellectual
who had spent a great deal of this life fighting academic fraud.
Famed Chinese
academician He Zuoxiu (C) answers questions from a crowd of reporters.
[sina] |
The following is the
question-and-answer exchange with the photographer. This particular exchange was
enough to earn him innumerable condemnations.
Photographer: Do you know how many people die in coal mines each day in
China?
He: The newspapers say more than 100 people ...
Photographer: Do you trust this number?
He: It is generally true ...
Photographer: This is absolutely dogfart. It is ten times as much! Have you
seen the movie Blind Shaft?"
He: I tell you that the most number of people
die not in coal mines, but in vehicular accidents. 120,000 per year!
Photographer: People die in traffic accidents. It happens in other countries.
It is unavoidable.
He: Why do you think that vehicular accidents are
unavoidable? Why does this mean that it is not a problem! Haaa, you are right
when you say that it is unavoidable! The deaths in Chinese coal mines are also
unavoidable! Because the people of China are too poor.
Photographer: You think that it is poverty and not corruption.
He: It is
mainly poverty, and not corruption. Why should the workers accept lower wages
and more dangerous conditions? The people are not fools. They cannot help but
know. Why they do accept it then? Because they can't live wthout accepting it.
Photographer: Then they ought to accept this kind of fate?
He: (If you
want to complain, then you complain that) that you should not be born in China
and you should not be a Chinese. Who told you to be unfortunately born in China?
Photographer: Did you not see that China is developing quite well?
He:
Yes. But our China problems can only move one step at a time. Social development
is a process. If China wants to develop, a certain price is unavoidable.
Photographer: But perhaps some of the innocent deaths could be avoided
...
He: Who is innocent? What is avoidable? There is a probabiliy
distribution. He Zuoxiu does not want people to die. But certain sacrfices are
sometimes unavoidable during the process of development. You hope to have no
sacrifices, but that is very unpractical.
Photographer: Do you mean that the coal miners should die?
He: The coal
miners should be said to have made a contribution We should give their
contributions a positive assessment.
Photographer: What was their contribution? They raised the GDP?
He: Very
correct. They solved the problem of the shortage of energy sources in China.
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