(Clearwisdom.net) In the early 1990s, I lived in the Ganjiakou area of Beijing. At that time, many laborers from other areas and from the countryside squatted by the roadside to conduct a very special business: their best customers were students who wanted to go abroad to study. These laborers were in the business of making counterfeit "official" stamps. When those students acquired the highly prized fake stamps that appeared to be from the offices of the schools that they had graduated from, they could fabricate their own college diplomas and transcripts.

Last year I saw a letter of recommendation used by the daughter of a friend of mine in China, who was a high-school student, to apply for admission to an American university. Although she was very young, the letter mentioned that she had organized and led a social investigation, which is considered to be a prestigious accomplishment. This friend later told me that she had not conducted any such investigation at all. They spent the money and had an intermediary agency make up the letter to deceive the university. He told me that there are many such agencies in China, which provide all kinds of services, from writing letters of recommendation or essays for admissions applications, to the comprehensive service of helping the applicants through the whole process of applying for admission, which costs tens of thousands of yuan. These agencies charge several hundred and even several thousand yuan for just one such letter or essay. In Canada it was revealed that three students were expelled from school for having identical essay papers.

In China, the fact is that the "outlook for fraud looks great." Twenty years ago, those laborers in the business of making counterfeit stamps had to squat by the roadsides in order to run their businesses. Today, the white-collar professionals in the "intermediary agencies" sit in their office buildings and use computers to fabricate things. Obviously, fraud and counterfeiting have become modernized, open, professional, and socially acceptable. This trend supports the notion that behind the superficial economic boom of China is a huge decline in social responsibility, honesty, and morality.

During the Beijing Olympic Games, which was thus far the grandest display of window-dressing that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has ever engineered to showcase themselves to the international community, examples of the declining moral standards were repeatedly demonstrated. The world was treated to a show of digitally enhanced fireworks, dubbed singing, fake piano playing, as well as supposed members of China's minority groups who were actually Han, fake audiences, demonstration zones that didn't exist, falsified ages for athletes, etc., etc. The rampant fraud at the Beijing Games was scandalous news in the Western media, but those who have lived for so long with this nature of deceit no longer see anything wrong with this behavior.

The really scary part of the CCP's "deceitful nature" is that in the past, the laborers who made counterfeit stamps for the students did so secretly. They were careful to not even let their families know what they were up to. In present day China under the Communist regime's rule, faking things is seen as being clever, as a "skill" to be to be admired, so people now blatantly lie in an "open and dignified" way, and this behavior is expected and taken for granted. If you don't buy into fraud, you are treated as an alien.

In China, some say that even the American President lies, so why can't the CCP fake things?

We can look at this issue from three aspects. First, one needs to use the universally accepted moral standards of mankind, instead of ones' own criteria, to judge whether something is right or wrong. Lying is lying and it is immoral, therefore judging what is right and wrong is actually quite simple. There are those who use what others say or do as an excuse to justify the CCP's lies, which in itself reflects a mindset based on the corruption of morality. Secondly, even for those who get away with lying in China, when they go to live and interact in Western societies, they become aware of the importance of trust, as people in the West assume that everyone is honest. That's how people in the West conduct their lives and their business. This is known and expected by everyone. Therefore, the comparison of a US President's lying with the CCP's systematic lying is improper. In Western societies, freedom of speech and the media exist and play a monitoring role. Deceit in Western society is usually the behavior of a single individual or a small group of individuals. This is different from the CCP's policy of lying, which has already spread from the ruling Party and the government throughout the whole society. Third, once the lies are exposed, people's reactions are different. In Western societies, people basically react to lying as a scandal, and those who have lied feel shame and embarrassment. Even the president may feel the need to apologize to society. But these days in China, many people feel that lying is not a fault, nor a big deal, and that it is expected. This indicates that something is amiss.

In fact, many Chinese people have also seen this problem. These people hope that China can reverse this trend and return to being a society of trust and honesty. But they feel that since everyone else is lying, if they don't also lie, they won't be able to make a living in society. Furthermore, they believe that their power as individuals is too insignificant. Even if they, themselves, pay attention to trust and honesty, they won't have much impact on society. So they feel helpless and start to drift with the current.

The root cause still lies with the CCP. For each day that the CCP continues to exist, the primary force that fosters lying, fraud, and deceit will exist for one more day, and people's helplessness will continue for another day. So withdrawing from the CCP and disintegrating the CCP and its deceitful nature is a prerequisite for the restoring China's ancient traditions and morality. After the CCP dissolves, freedom of belief will allow even more people, under the guidance of righteous faiths, to find ways to improve their own morality. For example, Falun Gong practitioners, who believe in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, already understand this, and even the cruelest torture and most violent brainwashing can't change their pursuit of "Truth." Although the practitioners haven't undertaken the improvement of mankind's morality as their goal in cultivation, this power of morality, which is engendered by this righteous faith, can objectively restore the spirit of morality traditionally inherent in the Chinese nationality. So stopping this persecution of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, withdrawing from the CCP, and disintegrating the CCP has become closely connected to everyone's future.