This just in from the People’s Daily:

Top Chinese leaders including Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin have made donations to natural disaster victims
and poverty-stricken people of the country, to help them spend the winter in
warmth, sources with the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee said on
Monday.

Following the top leaders, Party members, officials and workers of
institutions directly under the CPC Central Committee participated
enthusiastically in the donation, bringing with them woollen clothes,
cotton-padded clothes, quilts and mattresses, and cash, to the collection
stations.

Officers and servicemen, college students and retirees also braved the cold
wind and came to the collection stations with their donations to express their
concern and sympathy for the natural disaster victims and poor people.

The donation, advocated by President Hu Jintao, is meant to highlight the
CPC’s fundamental purpose to serve the people heart and soul and reflect the
Chinese people’s fine tradition to help those who are in trouble, said the
sources.

It is also a demonstration of the current national effort to build a
harmonious society, the sources said.

    But Heaven forbid that the Party contemplate real political change that would allow people to exercise more freedom to determine who their rulers should be.  These sorts of holiday stunts (we can fully expect Hu to wind up in a yurt for Chinese New Year’s) are especially hollow in the aftermath of the shootings in Dongzhou, where disenfranchised and powerless villagers struggle to keep corrupt local officials from taking away what little they have. 

    The invocation of "heart and soul" in the story above is obviously an allusion to Mencius, for whom "heart" was a key moral category.  But charity is not what Mencius was about.  Justice was his chief concern.  "Serving the People," is not a matter of an occasional hand out; it should be reflected in the daily governing practices and institutions of the country.  And as long as the "People’s Democratic Dictatorship" is the law of the land, there is no room for Mencian justice.