The Importance of Upholding the Common Good

(Minghui.org) Being good is an important part of what makes us human. The ancient Chinese sage Lao Zi wrote, “The highest good is like water, benefiting all things without competing.” Jesus explained similar ideas, which were recorded in the Gospel of Luke.

The Good Samaritan

The Gospel of Luke 10:35–27 recounts a story Jesus told about a traveler (the implication was that the man was a Jew). The man was beaten, stripped of his clothing, and left half dead on the road. A Jewish priest and then a Levite walked by—both avoided the man. Then a Samaritan saw him.

Samaritans and Jews were usually antagonistic toward each other, but the Samaritan helped the traveler. Jesus told the story in response to a lawyer’s question: “Who is my neighbor?” A neighbor is a person who has mercy for others.

Recognizing the importance of upholding the common good, many places instituted Good Samaritan laws to protect those who voluntarily help others.

Stark Reality in Modern China

Although kindness was cherished for thousands of years in China, it was seldom seen after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seized power in 1949. By promoting class struggle and brutality, the regime targeted landlords and capitalists while seizing their assets. Innocent people were killed while their neighbors looked the other way.

This trend continued throughout the CCP’s numerous political campaigns, including the Cultural Revolution. People were encouraged to attack others, including their own family members. Chinese people no longer trust each other.

A well-known website in China conducted an online poll, asking, “Should one help an elderly person who has fallen in the street?” Of the nearly 130,000 people who participated in the survey, 62.54% voted, “I would absolutely not help, for fear of getting into trouble.” Only 4.01% chose, “One should definitely help the elderly; it is a matter of basic public morality.”

What Goes Around Comes Around

This offers a stark glimpse into the apathy that afflicts Chinese society. Some feel the moral decline in China is related to the 27-year-long suppression of Falun Gong, a meditation system based on the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Practitioners strive to be better citizens at work, at home, and in their communities.

But the common good promoted by Falun Gong contradicts the CCP’s class struggle and brutality and has thus been suppressed. One month before the persecution started in July 1999, then top CCP leader Jiang Zemin gave orders to establish the 610 Office. The office is an extrajudicial agency that supervises the nationwide suppression of Falun Gong. Since July 1999, the entire state apparatus in China, especially the justice system, has been utilized in the persecution campaign to target Falun Gong practitioners.

Guo Yuansheng, the former Political Head of the Lingyuan Prison Administration Bureau in Liaoning Province, was a key 610 Office official. He employed various tactics to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their faith, including targeting their children’s university entrance exams, threatening to get them fired or be passed over for promotion, and suspending their wages.

Within five years after the persecution began in 1999, more than 70 practitioners in the region were detained, 14 were sentenced to forced labor, and over 100,000 yuan ($14,659) had been extorted from them. This caused practitioners and their families immense physical and mental suffering.

Similar to the Western saying, “You reap what you sow,” there’s an old Chinese saying, “Good is rewarded with good and evil incurs evil.” During a major conference held at the end of 2003, Guo Yuansheng had a brainstem hemorrhage. Despite emergency treatment at a Beijing hospital, he died in February 2004 at the age of 58.

Liang Junhong, an officer in Feicheng City, Shandong Province, actively participated in and directed the militia to detain, beat, and persecute Falun Gong practitioners. He also barred the children of any practitioner’s relatives from enlisting in the military. He declared, “Practicing Falun Gong will affect one’s entire clan; don’t even think about joining the army or attending a university.”

In late 1999, the nephew of a practitioner in Anzhuang Village passed all the exams and physicals to qualify for the Special Forces. Due to Liang’s directive, however, the boy was rejected. This incident sparked outrage among the villagers.

Liang died in May 2000 after he was diagnosed with cancer. He was only 46, and villagers believed this was a consequence of his mistreatment of Falun Gong practitioners and their families.

When basic humanity is at risk, all of us are eventually threatened.

Related Article in Chinese:

https://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2026/4/13/从“好撒玛利亚人”看现实中的善恶抉择-508582.html