[BRIEF NOTE] Perusing The Epoch Times
Mar. 27th, 2005 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI picked up the most recent copy of the The Epoch Times earlier this afternoon while I was downtown. It's an interesting publication, a weekly syndicated internationally with editions in various world languages. The paper claims to have the widest circulation of any Chinese-language weekly outside of China, though the accuracy of this claim is open to question.
What caught my attention, reading the latest issue of The Epoch Times, was the editorial board's claim that its "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party" inspired a half-million members of the Chinese Communist Party to defect. Reading them in their English version, I don't see anything many particularly new facts in that document, and certainly, skepticism about impressive but unsbustantiated claims is warranted here as always.
Then again, assuming that The Epoch Times' claims of widespread propagation within China via print are correct, someone reading these commentaries for the first time might indeed be provoked. I find it interesting, and a bit amusing, and somewhat awe-inspiring, to imagine a future where the "Nine Commentaries" really did end up playing a major role in the dissolution of Chinese Communism in the following decade: I would have gotten an inside peek.
What caught my attention, reading the latest issue of The Epoch Times, was the editorial board's claim that its "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party" inspired a half-million members of the Chinese Communist Party to defect. Reading them in their English version, I don't see anything many particularly new facts in that document, and certainly, skepticism about impressive but unsbustantiated claims is warranted here as always.
Then again, assuming that The Epoch Times' claims of widespread propagation within China via print are correct, someone reading these commentaries for the first time might indeed be provoked. I find it interesting, and a bit amusing, and somewhat awe-inspiring, to imagine a future where the "Nine Commentaries" really did end up playing a major role in the dissolution of Chinese Communism in the following decade: I would have gotten an inside peek.
