After class discussions, about the reading Tao Te Ching, made me really want to read up on possibly some hidden meanings/messages I did not catch from reading it. In class, the topic of “Te is the way” was mentioned, and how Chinese’s culture has followed this path for nearly 2,400 years. The ‘way’ being a feeling/motive which people followed apart of Confucianism One phrase in particular that caught my attention was ,”People are hungry. When rulers tax grain People are Hungry. People are rebellious. When rulers are active People are rebellious.” This made me think of today’s society, issues on world hunger, day-to-day strikes, and riots against different governments, as well as, just people not getting along. This quote goes in hand for example in recent news on abortion, for years now this has been a big discussion but not really brought up. Until, different state government’s decided to make new laws or revoke old ones. The government being active made people be rebellious to any decision they made no matter what. This example just shows how people don’t really act unless the government does, or feel as if their rights are being challenged. However, I was curious what other cultures may have thought of this, in this article, surprisingly this article compares to the quote with “when rulers are active people are rebellious,” people in China were outraged that this debate on abortion was over rights, whereas, for them it was law and order with the government. How the government controls this law to control its people which compares to early times in China how abortion was banned to increase its populations. The Chinese government never looked into their rights more so focused on planned population and control over its people. Then, China switched to restrict it saying they were not ready for fast-growing population and the resources/supplies they would need to feed everyone. A familiar law I’ve heard before is the “one-child policy,” which was put into effect in 1979, this let the government control the population. However, since sons were favored more as firstborn than a girl, this created a sex-ratio gap. The problem China then faced was their wasn’t enough females for marriage. The law was removed in 2016, the Chinese government created a new policy which allowed only two children if one or both parents were an only child. However, many people in China commented on this issue in the US and hope China doesn’t follow this path of controlling them more.
Furthermore, in Beijing, over the past few years people have been demanding their rights be respected. Today we see more and more protests happening in Hong Kong, in this article , shows people trying to draw attention to the issue on how the government has been controlling them and restricting their rights. This contrast, shows how the Chinese are now going against their rulers, going against the Confucius’s way for respecting all government hierarchy, the people are now following their own Te and revised confucianism philosophy which benefits their life, and rights.