A Chinese college student, Wang Jing, angered by her father’s adultery, has created a web site that publicly denounces his affairs:

A freshman at a Jinan university, East China’s Shandong Province, the
daughter Wang Jing resorted to radical measures including petitions, on her
website depicting the trials and tribulations of her family that was, as
she writes "derailed by a wanton father."

Her efforts were to no avail. Her parents’ 21-year union ended this February
with more resentment than pity.

"It’s he who made me go to such extreme measures when my previous
affectionate approaches had failed," Jing says. She allegedly says she
would rather sacrifice her father’s promising political career for a happy,
re-united family.

    One popular misconception of what Confucius said, which was promoted by the historical ways in which Confucian ideas were made into un-Confucian laws in China, is that the father should be all powerful within the family.   While there are obvious preferences in the Analects for older, wiser(??) individuals over younger people, and for men over women (a bias which must to be jettisoned to make Confucianism compatible with modern life), there is nothing automatic about a father’s standing and authority.

      To have any kind of moral significance, a father must fulfill his social duties as a father.  If he does not, he should be criticized – albeit gently at first – and if he persists in unethical behavior he should be called on it.

      It seems to me, therefore, that Wang Jing is enacting Confucian morality in an entirely appropriate way.  Now, some may argue that children must simply endure parental depravities, as Mencius tells us Shun did, but, as that same story of Shun suggests, children must also keep an eye on larger family – and I would argue social – solidarities.  Shun, after all, disobeyed his father and got married in order to do right by the larger filial duty of maintaining familial integrity.  And that is, by and large, what Wang Jing is doing.  Her father disgraced the family; so, she must take action to protect the family.

     You go girl!

UPDATE: Roland, at ESWN, is on it.  And, from Roland, here is a link to the site (in Chinese).

UP-UPDATE: The story thickens.  Roland has links and translations which suggest the father was not at fault, but the wife!   If that is so, then the daughter may have been duped.  And if that is true, then maybe she should set up a web page criticizing the mother.