Communism in China

[Unedited]

Communism in China

By John J. Tkacik

Reports of the death of communism in China are greatly exaggerated. As the 21st Century moves into its second decade, the Chinese Communist Party retains a tight monopoly on political power, unquestioned authority over economic power, and legitimates it all with the "universal truth" (pubian zhenli) of Marxism-Leninism. Its "totalitarian" character, not as horrific as it was between 1949-1979, has softened. But insofar as the Party claims total authority over all aspects of societal behavior (i.e. all political, religious, labor-organizing, community activist, educational, even reproductive rights are under the authority of the state, and must have the license of the state or Party), it is "totalitarian".

Charter '08. So, it was startling that a courageous document appeared in the Chinese internet on December 10, 2008 marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Over three hundred Chinese scholars and academics signed their names to “Charter ’08,” a comprehensive manifesto against tyranny inspired by a similar effort by Czech intellectuals in 1977. It drew attention to the failures of China's totalitarian regime and called for dismantling the Chinese Communist Party’s constitutional monopoly on political power in China.

The appearance of Charter '08 was startling because the day before its issuance, its organizer, Mr. Liu Xiaobo, was arrested by a dozen police who carried off his computers, cell phone and documents. He remains jailed. A second organizer, Zhang Zuhua, also arrested, had his savings removed from his bank account. Within days, over one hundred Charter signatories had reported harassment, threats and interrogations by state security police. No doubt scores, if not hundreds, more were also harassed and were dissuaded from complaining in public. But if police intimidation was meant as a mere warning shot, it seems not to have worked. By January 29, The Washington Post reported over 7,900 more Chinese signatures had been added to the original three hundred.

Responding to the Charter in the opening weeks of 2009, China’s communist leadership cautioned the population that the consequences of “counterrevolutionary” thought could be unpleasant. On January 15, Mr. Jia Qinglin, the fourth-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party published a lengthy tract in the Party’s main theoretical journal Qiushi (‘Seeking Truth’) that outlined the CCP’s glorious tradition of including “all democratic parties” under the “leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.” Mr. Jia called on China’s intellectuals to "build a line of defense to resist Western two-party and multi-party systems, bicameral legislatures, the three-branch separation of powers and other kinds of erroneous ideological interferences," He demanded they adhere to "ideological unity.”

Charter '08 is a stark reminder to the rest of the world that despite China's undeniable improvements in living standards and its new status as a global superpower, China is still a communist dictatorship. And the state's response to the Charter is a reminder to China's intellectuals of their fragile status under communist rule.

Thought Control. Throughout its history, the CCP has had a core tradition of suppressing free thought. A half century ago, for example, on May 8, 1958, Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong delivered a rambling dogmatic screed against the worthiness of age and the value of education to the second session of the Eighth Party Congress. In an unsettling display, Chairman Mao mocked an elderly historian for not praising China’s first Emperor Qin (Ch'in Shih Huang) in a tract he had written. The transcript records that someone . . .

“. . . interrupts: ‘Ch’in-shih-huang burned the books and buried the scholars alive’. Chairman Mao: What did he amount to? He only buried alive 460 scholars, while we buried 46,000. In our suppression of the counter-revolutionaries, did we not kill some counter-revolutionary intellectuals? I once debated with the democratic people: You accuse us of acting like Ch’in-shih-huang, but you are wrong; we surpass him 100 times. You berate us for imitating Ch’in-shih-huang in enforcing dictatorship. We admit them all. What is regrettable is that you did not say enough. We have had to say it for you. (Laughter.)”

By that time, Mao’s Communists had ruled China for less than nine years -- just nine years into a reign of terror, famine, brutality and murder that would mark the Chinese Communist Party’s next twenty years of rule and would intimidate its population – with the exception of the May-June 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations – unto this day.

. . .

The Twentieth Century was unkind to the Chinese people. It began with the collapse in 1911 of the last imperial dynasty after decades of corruption, inept governance and social disintegration. From the wreckage of empire, provincial warlords struggled for power and profit at the expense of the people. The West demanded an "Open Door" to China to assure free access for European and American trade in China's markets regardless of which warlord was in charge, or where. Japan saw itself as the savior of its ancient cultural origins (and its lucrative markets) by moving into China's power vacuum to command it by force of arms – and, in the process, to keep out Westerners. China's Nationalists wanted to unite the nation and throw out the foreigners.

The Origins of Chinese Communism. The small Chinese Communist Party, a creation of Moscow, proclaimed that the nation's poor must unite and destroy the wealthy. In 1923, the Comintern in Moscow ordered the 420 CCP members in China – mostly labor organizers famous for violent protests in China's hinterland cities – to join China's Nationalist Party, itself a political party of Leninist organization if not ideology.

Under the aegis of the Nationalists, the CCP thrived, secretly recruiting over 57,000 members by the spring of 1927, a figure that alarmed the Nationalist chief, Chiang Kai-shek, who himself was planning a military campaign against China's warlords and unite China as a socialist power similar to the new Soviet Union. In May of that year, Chiang crushed the Communists in Shanghai, killing thousands and sending the CCP leadership into hiding. Mao, however, escaped the purge – he had been organizing peasants in mountainous southeast China and commanded the only serious armed force under CCP control – eventually liquidating 4,400 CCP fighters of doubtful loyalty (the so-called "Anti-Bolsheviks") at Futian, Jiangxi, in December 1930. Violence had become a hallmark of Mao's political theory – after all, Mao famously declared, "A revolution is not a dinner party . . . it is an act of violence by which one class overthrows another."

Over the next five years, nearly surrounded by Chiang's armies in five separate "encirclement campaigns," the core of Mao's forces ultimately eluded destruction in 1935, fleeing in the legendary (if not wholly mythical) "Long March" first west, then north, to sanctuary near the Soviet-controlled Gobi Desert. In 1937, Japan, which had occupied Manchuria in 1932 and had formed alliances with several Chinese provincial warlords, attacked troops loyal to Chiang at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking (instigated, some say, by the CCP), thus diverting the Nationalist's campaign away from the escaping Communists.

China's Civil War 1945-49. For the next decade, until the end of the Second World War, generally free from Chiang's threat, Mao's communists governed their base areas and a population of several tens of millions with a combination of populism mixed with violence against "enemy classes" (landlords, petit bourgeoisie and the like). Mao warmly remembered that, Without the respite offered by the Japanese invasion, Mao's communists would likely have been defeated.

"In the past, Japan attacked China, and occupied the better part of China. There are now some Japanese capitalist class representatives who see us and say: We are deeply sorry, we in the past had aggressed against you all. I said: No, if it weren't for your aggression and your occupation of the better part of China. We could not have been victorious; your aggression stirred up the entire Chinese people to rise and oppose you. It was only because of Japan's occupation of the better part of China that the Chinese people all therefore rose up."

Not for nothing did Mao's armies resolutely avoid major fighting against Japan in World War II. They were well-positioned in large guerrilla units throughout the countryside in Japanese-occupied Manchuria and North China where they stayed out of the way of regular Japanese troops.

The Soviet Army invaded Manchuria on August 9, 1945, the day of the atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki which shortly forced Japan's surrender, and coordinated the disarming of 1.2 million Japanese forces with prepositioned Chinese communist forces. Well-supplied, rested, and motivated, the Communists easily outfought Chiang's Nationalists, who were exhausted after nine years of fighting Japan, riven by warlord rivalries and dispirited by the corruption of Chiang's regime.

Moreover, the President Truman had lost confidence in Chiang's rule. Despite the fact that the U.S. had "authorized aid to Nationalist China in the form of grants and credits totaling more than 2 billion dollars" between 1945 and 1949, there had been little accounting for its use and it was the opinion of the Department of State that "the Nationalist Armies did not lose a single battle during the crucial year of 1948 through lack of arms or ammunition"; rather they lost because of the regime's corruption. Thus, by 1949, when Truman withheld political support and blocked last-ditch Congressional efforts to get even more military and economic aid to Chiang's regime, what was left of the Nationalist armies was obliged to withdraw across the Taiwan Strait and hope for the best.

Violence and the New Communist State. Mao Zedong pronounced the establishment of the People's Republic of China under the "leadership of the Chinese Communist Party" on October 1, 1949, and the Chinese people hoped a new era of peace would enable their nation to rebuild its wrecked economy.

It was not to be. In June 1950, North Korea had invaded the South with the full support and encouragement of the Soviet Union. By October 2, Chinese leader Mao Zedong made an almost unilateral decision to send over a million "People's Volunteers" to fight the American Army which had arrived at the banks of the Yalu River, North Korea's border with Manchuria. By mid 1953, when the Panmunjom Armistice was signed, "several hundreds of thousands" Chinese soldiers had died and China was an extra $700 million in debt to the Soviet Union.

Three Anti's and Five Anti's. Away from Korean battlefields, China's new communist rulers also carried out new violent campaigns – against their own people. In 1949, they launched "land reform" which involved confiscating the land and possessions of at least one "landlord" or "wealthy peasant" per village in arbitrary tribunals. These tribunals required poorer neighbors were to "speak bitterness" (su ku) against wealthier townsmen, and in many cases call for their deaths. Party cadres could then cart off the more valuable possessions of the "convicted" class enemies, and parcel out what was left among poorer folk, thus coopting otherwise hesitant citizens. Those who failed to "speak bitterness" were themselves accused of reactionary behavior. The land reforms and campaigns to root out -- first three, then five -- separate classes of counterrevolutionaries and other "bad class elements", the so-called "Three Anti's and Five Anti's" (san fan wu fan) campaigns of 1949-1952 are estimated to have involved over five million executions.

CCP historians now acknowledge that these campaigns were "a bit leftist" and "caused some intellectuals to suffer harm they ought not have suffered." While CCP histories admit the excesses of the early "Anti's" campaigns, they nevertheless insist the "line was largely correct."

Anti-Rightist Campaign and the "Great Leap". Not so with the "Anti-Rightist Campaign" that began in May 1957. There "several hundred thousand, or even more, good comrades and friends loyal to the Party and to the socialist mission suffered unjust persecution for a long time." Clearly, the phrase "or even more" suggests the number was over a million – and that number is just the "unjustly" persecuted ones.

Most of the millions persecuted, unjustly or otherwise, in the Anti-Rightist Campaign really did oppose Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward," his "People's Communes" and to a lesser extent the "Socialist Education Campaign," collectively known as the "Three Red Flags." These were the beginning of Mao's drive to collectivize China's economy in one fell swoop from 1958 through 1962. The "Three Red Flags" were not only disastrous to the economy, they were catastrophic to humanity. The "Three Red Flags" had killed 36 million Chinese – even by current Chinese scholarly reckoning -- before it was over.

The Cultural Revolution. And no sooner had one ideologically-driven disaster decimated China's benighted people, than Mao Zedong (his feelings hurt when the Party forced him to take at least unpublished blame for the disasters) unleashed another. The "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" (Wuchanjieji Wenhua Da Geming) was Mao's revenge against the "revisionists" and "capitalist roaders" in the Party who had challenged him.

Yet, for the sake of the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao's rivals needed Chairman Mao in his role as custodian of the "universal truth of Marxism-Leninism" – a role he cloaked, with the support of the People's Liberation Army, in the aura of an infallible demigod. In the summer of 1966, this demigod instructed tens of millions of Chinese adolescents across the land to rise and overthrow all things old and foreign, and to "struggle" against their high school teachers and college professors, their local government officials, their local police, their parents, their factory bosses, and to rise up in rebellion against those who resisted.

And they did what Mao told them. Unsurprisingly, widespread chaos ensued. First, Mao had literally hundreds of his major and minor political rivals arrested, including the number-two in the Party (Liu Shaoqi), Korean War hero (Marshal Peng Dehuai) and the Party's secretary general (Deng Xiaoping). Across the length and breadth of China, youthful Red Guard factions battled rival factions in open warfare; student rebels stormed schools, factories and government offices indicting top provincial cadres and lowly private citizens alike for counterrevolutionary crimes – and exacting their retribution. The most mindless stage of this mass psychosis lasted three years, and ended in 1969 with the Army deporting millions of youth "down to the countryside" to continue their "socialist education." But a Cultural Revolution mentality continued to rule China until Mao's death in September 1976. Within weeks of Mao's death, his wife and top aides – the notorious "Gang of Four" – were arrested for their roles in the decade of upheaval. At their trial in 1980, the state tried and convicted them of direct personal responsibility for the deaths of 34,800 innocent people. That number included 16,222 members of the "Inner Mongolian Peoples' Revolutionary Party" who were executed on trumped up charges (another 346,000 were "persecuted").

The Cultural Revolution and China's New Leadership. The number, of course, was vastly greater. The violence, terror, theft, destruction, arson and, of course, death resulting from the Cultural Revolution that left uncounted millions dead and touched literally hundreds of millions of Chinese . . . including the current leader of China, General Secretary and State President Hu Jintao, and his heir presumptive Xi Jinping, just to name a few.

In 1968, Red Guards beat and tortured Hu's father, a small town tea merchant – a 'capitalist' – leaving him psychologically disabled until his death in 1978. When his father was "struggled," Hu Jintao was a 26-year old engineer in remote Gansu province, a thousand miles away. Perhaps young Jintao knew little or nothing of his father's ordeal. At his father's death, Hu Jintao was a 36 year old engineering cadre in remote desert Gansu province. He returned to his hometown, hoping to clear his father's record as a petit bourgeoisie element, or whatever he had been charged with. But he failed.

In 2009, Hu Jintao is nominally the most powerful man in China. Yet, even he lauds the memory of Mao Zedong and declines to criticize the "leftist" excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Those excesses were too much for even the Party to overlook, and on June 27, 1981, the Central Committee passed a "Resolution on Party History" that placed the entire blame for "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" squarely on Mao, himself. Yet the man who occupies the Party's three top titles (General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Chairman of the Party's "Central Military Commission," and Chairman of State of the People's Republic of China) still looks to Mao Zedong as the legitimating figure of the regime.

Hu Jintao's heir apparent, Vice Chairman of State Xi Jinping, was the son of a senior Communist Party Politburo member, Xi Zhongxun, himself imprisoned and roughed up by Mao's Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution. A sister was not dealt with gently – she died as a result of her persecution. Xi Jinping was only fourteen years old when his father was jailed. Young Xi was separated from his family and spent his youth on a poverty-stricken commune where he was forced to read out denunciations of his father at daily “struggle” sessions. As Xi explained in 1992 to a Washington Post reporter, “Even if you don’t understand, you are forced to understand,” he said adding “it makes you mature earlier.”

What hold does Communism have over these men, and over their 1.3 billion fellow Chinese, that they have allowed themselves to be co-opted by its ideology of total authority over mankind?

Post-Cultural Revolution China. The first three decades of communist rule in China (1949-1978) were years of terror and totalitarian oppression, sufficient to educate the Chinese people on the unhealthiness of opposing the Party-state. But the Party had matured considerably by the end of 1978, when it reversed its course from Mao's collectivist dogmatism to move toward market-guided economic reforms – the "Reform and Opening" movement led by Mao's eventual successor, Deng Xiaoping.

The economic reforms of the 1980s persuaded the CCP to relax strictures on political, religious, labor, artistic and intellectual activities – despite profound concerns that old-line Party members had about "spiritual pollution." As the decade of the 80s progressed, younger Party members sympathized with student demands for freedoms of expression that tracked with better ties with the United States, Japan and Europe, and with China's integration into the global trade networks. Even the titular heads of the Party and state – General Secretary Hu Yaobang (no relation to current General Secretary Hu Jintao) and Premier Zhao Ziyang urged easing of propaganda and censorship. But old habits die hard, and in early 1987 Party elders (including the architect of the reforms, Deng Xiaoping himself) became alarmed at Hu Yaobang's reformist tendencies and removed him from the Party's top leadership. Nonetheless, the demoted Hu had an enthusiastic following among youth and academics, and Deng compromised by replacing him as Party Chief with the equally relaxed Zhao Ziyang.

Tiananmen. By 1988, with Zhao Ziyang continuing "liberation of thought," new and daring political commentary began appearing in newspapers, journals and books across China. The unexpected death of Hu Yaobang in April 1989 sparked an equally unexpected outpouring of emotion as thousands, later tens of thousands, of youngsters demonstrated in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, first to commemorate Hu Yaobang's liberating ideals, then to complain about the Party's corruption and inattention to the plight of workers, peasants and students, and ultimately to demand democratic change in China.

At its high point, the student-led crowds in Tiananmen Square as of May 13, 1989, numbered 1.5 million. And demonstrations had spread to China's other major cities. The CCP Politburo was paralyzed by its inability to reach a consensus. General Secretary Zhao Ziyang and his allies felt validated by the support of the demonstrators. The hardline Premier Li Peng, backed by old-guard elders (who suspected that the demonstrators were egged on by Zhao in a Cultural Revolution-like tactic against the Party apparatchiks), declared it "counter-revolutionary turmoil." Party members received no instructions on how to deal with the demonstrations – leaving tens of thousands of cadres and government functionaries feeling free to join the demonstrations, often under the banners of their work units. But the nationwide scope and massive scale of the demonstrations finally convinced Deng that the Party's rule was in jeopardy. On May 19, Zhao Ziyang and his allies were purged from the leadership and Deng issued secret orders to the Army for 400,000 troops to encircle Beijing. The next day, martial law was declared and Party cadres finally understood that the demonstrations were anathema. But the students did not. They continued their occupation of Tiananmen Square, their demands for democracy and reforms becoming more insistent. On May 29, art students assembled a large white statue of plaster, foamboard and wood in the square – a "Goddess of Democracy" modeled on the Statue of Liberty and staring square in the eye the portrait of Mao Zedong on Tianan Gate.

New divisions of People's Liberation Army infantrymen continued to amass in the city's suburbs. As the Goddess of Democracy statue was unveiled, reports rippled through the student crowds that leaders of new independent trade unions were being arrested. Unarmed columns of soldiers appeared in downtown streets, jostling with students and demonstrators, fights broke out. On the evening of June 3, the soldiers reappeared, this time armed and firing their weapons.

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing estimated that about 750 civilians were killed in Tiananmen that evening, several thousand were arrested, some eventually executed. It was a convincing demonstration that the communist regime was absolutely committed to the perseveration of absolute authority over China, even in an era of increasing global freedom and democracy. It was also a demonstration of Mao Zedong's dictum, "Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

The Communist Party in 21st Century China. Even into the 21st Century, China's citizens have few, if any, rights against the State. As the signers of Charter '08 have found out, there remains little freedom to air political views. As the parents of children killed in the collapse of shoddily-built government schools during the May 12 Sichuan earthquake, or families of children poisoned by melamine in poorly regulated food production have discovered, complaining is okay, so long as no one complains about the Party. Ethnic minorities protesting the state's repression of religion and culture, in Buddhist Tibet or Moslem Xinjiang.

But China is now a recognized economic superpower, or perhaps something more challenging: it is an economic superpower where absolute authority over economic decisions rests with the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Since the 1990s, China has evolved from a command economy to a mixed economy with increasing use of the market. But the state presence is remains very ample in many different sectors. So, while the last three decades of unprecedented prosperity and economic growth rest largely on what the late Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, called the "socialist market economy", China emphatically is not a "market economy." And – quite the opposite of the world's true market economies – China's full economic power can be marshaled and directed at the absolute will of the state.

Of course, there are those who believe that China will mellow in its own way and in its own time. Those believers point to the mechanism of a growing “middle class” that will demand peace and stability from the regime and will exert adequate restraint on state power. About 5 percent of the population consists of CCP members. About the same number are “middle class.” Are they substantially overlapping sets? That is, are members of the "middle class" more likely to be Party members?

Indeed, of this "middle class" at least nine out of ten of its wealthiest members are Party members. A confidential survey of Chinese incomes conducted by the Central Party School Research Office in March 2006, reportedly reflects that, under the heading “private ownership of property (foreign property not included)” some 27,310 Chinese own property valued in excess of 50 million yuan (about US$15 million). And 3,220 people own in excess of 100 million. Of this latter figure, 2,932 people – 91 percent – were identified as “children of senior cadres”. And those 2,932, held “assets valued at 2.045 trillion yuan.”

The same report also claimed “in the cities, income of middle and high-ranking bureaucrats already exceed the income of civil servants and mid-income people in developed countries in Western Europe and the United States.” This statement could not possibly be true—unless, perhaps, it includes the institutionalized corruption that seems to be a perquisite of Party membership.

This is to say, the Party is quite adept at using its full panoply of economic instruments and its newly rising "middle class" to support the political and military goals of the CCP.

And – as any businessman in China, foreign or domestic, can attest – it does. Boycotted French businesses in China felt China's wrath when it permitted demonstrations in Paris against the Praetorian phalanx of Chinese security police that guarded the "Olympic Torch." U.S. aerospace companies that sell defense arms and services to Taiwan are pressured. American commentators and screen acting personalities who engage in acts of lèse majesté against China's leaders become the butts of state-directed boycotts. Chinese student thugs in Seoul, Korea, viciously assault South Korean police defending anti-Beijing protesters there. And an overseas Chinese student at Duke University, whose sole transgression was to urge Chinese and Tibetan students to dialogue peacefully, was so vilified in the state-controlled Chinese internet that her father fears "he may have to change jobs."

And that's just the influence that China now exerts on people outside of China by virtue of the Chinese state's unquestioned authority over the economy. In the near future, with China's GDP doubling every three years in U.S. dollar terms , China's economic clout may be more to fear than its rapidly expanding military forces – which are probably growing at about the same rate.

The 21st Century will be more hospitable to the emerging Chinese superpower than the 20th. But Communist China is seems unlikely to use its new influence in the pursuit of global goals that the free world will find satisfactory. As one think-tank scholar in China's intelligence services points out, “In the world today, virtually all of America’s adversaries are China’s friends.” Human rights, restraint of nuclear proliferation, open trade and capital markets, respect for intellectual property, even mitigation of climate change and environmental degradation are policies that the Chinese regime believes are someone else's responsibilities.

Notes

Adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948. Text at http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html.
For a full translation into English, see "China's Charter 08, Translated from the Chinese by Perry Link," The New York Review of Books, Volume 56, Number 1 • January 15, 2009, at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22210.
Ariana Eunjung Cha, "In China, a Grass-Roots Rebellion; Rights Manifesto Slowly Gains Ground Despite Government Efforts to Quash It," The Washington Post, January 29, 2009; p. A01 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/28/AR200901....
Jia Qinglin, "Gaoju Zhongguo Tese Shehuizhuyi weida qizhi ba Renmin Zhengxie shiye buduan tui xiang qian jin," (Raise high the great banner of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics to press ahead unceasingly the mission of the People's Consultative Conference," Qiushi (Seek Truth), 2009 Volume 2, Issue 495, January 16, 2009, at http://www.qsjournal.com.cn/qs/20090116/GB/qs%5E495%5E0%5E1.htm.
"Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Speeches At The Second Session, Of The Eighth Party Congress,
May 8-23, 1958" in "Mao Zedong Sixiang Wansui" (Long Live Mao Zedong Thought), undated Red Guard publication, probably from 1968. From Mao Zhu Weikan Gao, 'Mao Zedong Sixiang Wansui' Bieji ji Qita (Anthology of Unpublished Writings of Mao, 'Long Live Mao Zedong Thought' and Others), reprinted by Center for Chinese Research Materials, Oakton, Virginia, 1989, Library of Congress accession number DS778.M3 A25 1989. For affirmation of the authenticity of the "Mao Zedong Sixiang Wansui" documents see Stuart Schram, ed., Chairman Mao Talks to the People, Talks and Letters: 1956-1971 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), pp. 49-57.
The "Futian Incident" was a turning point in Mao's rise to power in the CCP. See Laszlo Ladany, The Communist Party of China and Marxism 1921-1985, a Self-Portrait, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, 1988, pp. 34-35. Ladany cited internal CCP "Party History" documents as noting that the "truth behind the Futian Incident has never been made clear." Mao's top security aide, Zeng Sheng, was the man who implemented the liquidations. Zeng was a rare Mao loyalist who was not purged in the Cultural Revolution. His son, Zeng Qinghong, was China's Vice President and a CCP Politburo Standing Committee member from 2002-2007. Zeng Shan is cited as the triggerman in at least two accounts of the Futian Incident. Benjamin Schwartz, Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1951, pp. 174-177. See also Otto Braun, A Comintern Agent in China 1932-1939, London, C. Hurst & Company, 1982. p. 57.
"Report on an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan (March 1927), cited in Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1966, pp.11-12.
Chiang had been intent on eliminating the CCP threat even after a Nationalist-CCP truce in December 1936. The Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 1937 convinced him to focus his full attention on Japan. For a discussion of the CCP's possible role in the Incident see John Toland, The Rising Sun, the Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, Modern Library, New York, 1970, pp-43-47.
"Anjian Xinxilan Gongchandang Shuji Weierkekesi Fufude duihua" (Conversation on meeting with Mr and Mrs Wilcox, Communist Party of New Zealand Secretary, February 9, 1964), in Mao Zedong Sixiang Wansui, September 1967, p. 327. According to Ian Buruma, "When the then prime minister of Japan, Tanaka Kakuei, first met Chairman Mao in 1972, the Chairman allegedly thanked the Japanese leader warmly, for, as he put it, without the Japanese war communism would have been defeated." Ian Buruma, "The rest is history," Financial Times, January 21, 2005, at
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1f7e988e-6ab4-11d9-9357-00000e2511c8.html.
Chinese Communist Party historians generally agree that, aside from the "Hundred Regiments War" (Bai Tuan Da Zhan" of 1940 which "inadvertently revealed our strength," CCP military forces curtailed their activities in the 1941-44 timeframe. In 1943, a Soviet TASS correspondent with the CCP armies complained that CCP "guerrillas" (literally, "moving strikers") "move but don't strike." See Liao Gailong, "Guanyu dang shi he dang shi ziliaode mantan" (Comments on Party history and Party History materials), Xuexi Cankao Ziliao, Beijing Municipal Political Consultative Conference, February 1981, p. 15.
See the "China White Paper", also known as United States Relations with China with Special Reference To The Period 1944-1949, U.S. Department of State, August 1949, pp. XIV-XV.
Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Patterns in the Dust, Chinese-American Relations and the Recognition Controversy 1949-1950, Columbia University Press, New York, 1983, p. 176.
Many Chinese accounts hint broadly that the decision to go to war was Mao's alone. See Ye Yumeng, Hei Xue, Chubing Chaoxian Jishi [Black Snow, A True Account of Entry into the Korean War], Beijing, Zuozhe Chubanshe 1988, pp. 46-47. See also Zhang Xi, “Peng Dehuai Shou Ming Shuai Shi, Kang Mei Yuan Chaode Qianwian Houhou” [Peng Dehuai Appointed to Lead the Troops, Background for the Korean War], in Zhonggong Dangshi Ziliao [CCP Party History Materials] Issue 31, Beijing, Zhonggong Dangshi Ziliao Chubanshe, 1989, p. 126; Nie Rongzhen, Inside the Red Star, the Memoirs of Marshal Nie Rongzhen, New World Press, Beijing, 1988, p. 636. This is a fairly accurate English translation of Nie Rongzhen Huiyi Lu, published in 1986.
Hong Xuezhi, Recollection of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea (Kang Mei Yuanxhao Zhanzheng Huiyi); People’s Liberation Army Cultural Press, Beijing 1990; p.275. Chinese planners expected to lose 200,000 in the first year of battle alone, according to Xiaobing Li, Allan R. Millet and Bin Yu, Mao’s Generals Remember Korea; University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, 2002; p12. Probably over 500,000 Chinese soldiers were killed in the war.
Roderick MacFarquhar, John King Fairbank, The Cambridge History of China Volume 14, The People's Republic of China, Part I, the Emergence of Revolutionary China 1949-1965, Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 277.
For a detailed description of su ku, see Richard H. Solomon, Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1971, pp. 195-197.
Simon Leys, The Burning Forest, Essays on Chinese Culture and Politics, Henry Holt, New York, 1983, pp. 124-125. (Leys cites Jacques Guillermaz, Le Parti Communiste chinois au poivoir, Payot, Paris, 1972, p. 33)
Liao Gailong, p. 26
Ibid, p.35
"Ideological debate in China; The Little Red Bookshop," The Economist, February 5, 2009, p. 37 at http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13062084.
A Great Trial in Chinese History, The Trial of the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing Counter-Revolutionary Cliques, Nov. 1980 – Jan. 1981," New World Press, Beijing, 1981, pp. 20-21.
See Andrew Nathan, "Mao’s Last Revolution: The Bloody Enigma, The New Republic, December 3, 2006 at http://www.howardwfrench.com/archives/2006/12/03/maos_last_revolution_th..., a review of Roderick Macfarquhar's book Mao’s Last Revolution.
Wu Su-li, “Hu Jintao’s Father Unjustly Accused during Cultural Revolution and Perished,” in “Beijing News” from Hong Kong “Kaifang” Open Magazine. May 2004 (vol. 209): 14-16. A translation of the original article by Xia Xiangren (transl. T. Augustine Lo), "Hu Jintao and his bitter banquet of injustice," Asia Times Online, Aug 27, 2004, is available at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FH27Ad02.html.
See, for example, Mr. Hu's speech marking Mao's 110th birthday, in which he departed from the Party's position in the 1980's that Mao had indeed made "Hu Jintao zai Mao Zedong yanzhen 110 zhounian zuotanhuide jianghua" (Hu Jintao's Talk at the Symposium Marking the 110th Anniversary of Mao Zedong's Birth), Xinhua, December 26, 2001, at http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/big5/news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2003-1.... Current Chinese scholars note that Mr. Hu still omits "the party's usual warning about the need to prevent leftism" in his speeches. (see, again, "Ideological debate in China; The Little Red Bookshop," The Economist, February 5, 2009, p. 37 at http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13062084.)
"Zhongguo Gongchandang Zhongyang Weiyuan Hui Guanyu Jianguo yilai Dangde ruogan lishi wentide Jueyi" (Resolution of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Part on certain questions of history since the founding of the nation), is a basic Party document, reprinted in Sun Weiben, ed., Zhongguo Gongchandang Dangwu Gongzuo Da Cidian (Chinese Communist Party Great Dictionary of Party Work), Zhongguo Zhanwang Publishers, Beijing, May 1989, pp. 785-788.
Lena H. Sun, "Post for a `Princeling'," The Washington Post, June 8, 1992, p. A-12,
The best eye-witness account is found in a declassified U.S. Department of State telegram 89 BEIJING 17584, Subject: TFCH01 -- TIANANMEN, JUNE 3--4: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT (Press Here for Text).
Quotations of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, p. 61.
"Chinese police detain tainted milk activist," The Associated Press, January 2, 2009; Audra Ang, "China to try critic of government's quake response," The Associated Press, February 2, 2009. Chris Buckley, "China arrests quake critic on secrets charge," Reuters, July 19, 2008.
"Superpower" is a charged word, but, there it is. Read the opening sentence of C. Fred Bergsten, "A Partnership of Equals - How Washington Should Respond to China's Economic Challenge," Foreign Affairs, July/August 2008, at http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080701faessay87404/c-fred-bergsten/a-par....
To paraphrase Zoellick. Robert Zoellick, "Remarks to the American Embassy," August 2, 2005.
Party membership in July 2007 was reported to be 72.39 million. “China Communist Party Adds 2.6M Members,” The Associated Press, July 10, 2007.
“China has 80 million Middle Class Members: Official,” Xinhua, June 18, 2007. The story says China’s National Bureau of Statistics defines “middle-income households as having an annual income between 60,000 and 500,000 yuan (7,792 and 65,790 U.S. dollars).”
The figures were reportedly included in a story published in Shijie Guanli (“World Manager,”) magazine. A colleague directed my attention to the statistics included in an article by Men Jiedan ed., “Zhongguo Yiwan Fuhao 9 cheng yishang shi gaogan zinu” (More than 90% of Chinese multi-millionaires are children of senior cadres), Zhongxinwang bbs, March 12, 20208, posted on the Zhongguo Xinwenshe Henan Fenshe website at, http://www.henannews.com.cn/newcnsnews/70/2008-03-12/news-70-72717.shtml, (July 10, 2008)
Or, as CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao averred in his report to the 17th Party Congress, October 24, 2007, "We must uphold the Party's role as the core of leadership in directing the overall situation and coordinating the efforts of all quarters." For the text of the report see "Full text of Hu Jintao's report at 17th Party Congress," Xinhua, October 24, 2007, at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-10/24/content_6938749.htm.
"New anti-French rallies form in China, VENTING ANGER: While hundreds of people protested outside outlets of a French retail chain, Mia Farrow was allowed into Hong Kong to deliver a speech on Darfur," Taipei Times, May 2, 2008, p. 1 at http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2008/05/02/2003410814 .
Wendell Minnick, "China Threatens U.S. Defense Contractors Over Taiwan," Defense News, May 12, 2008, p. 8.
For example, see Jill Drew, "China Spurns Apology, Keeps Pressure on CNN," The Washington Post, April 18, 2008; p. A17, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/17/AR200804....
Choe Sang-hun, "Olympic Torch Protesters Attacked in South Korea," The New York Times, April 28, 2008, at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/world/asia/28korea.html; Sunny Lee, "Internet rumors roil China-Korea ties," Asia Times, August 9, 2008, at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JH09Ad02.html.
Shen Hua, Ho Shan and Lydia Cheung, "Duke University Chinese Student Who Sparked International Furor Says Public Apology Letter Is Fake," Radio Free Asia News, April 18, 2008.
China reported 2007 GDP at $3.46 trillion. See "Guonei Shengchan zongzhi (2007 nian 1-4 jidu) chubu gaisuan" [Gross Domestic Product (quarters 1-4, 2007) preliminary figures], National Bureau of Statistics of China, January 24, 2008, at http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/jdsj/t20080124_402460186.htm. On January 22, 2009, China reported GDP at $4.39 trillion – a 27% increase in US dollar terms. See "Guonei shengchan zongzhi (2008 nian 1-4 jidu)" (GDP for 2008 (QI-QIV)) at http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/jdsj/t20090122_402534594.htm.
While China's exact military spending figures are state secrets, published budget numbers reflect annual increases in real military spending of between 14 and 19 percent, nearly twice the rate of real GDP growth. See also Gordon Fairclough and Jason Leow, "China's Military Boost May Stir Fear," The Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2008, p. A10, at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120462837702610135.html.
In Chinese, his phrase is "zai shijieshang, jihu suoyou Meiguode duishou dou shi Zhongguode pengyou." See Yuan Peng, "Yuan Peng: Meiguo san da shouduan yanyuan Zhongguo jueqi" (Yuan Peng: America's three major schemes to impede China's rise), Guangzhou Ribao, November 23, 2007, p. A20, at http://gzdaily.dayoo.com/html/2007-11/23/content_86129.htm (June 27, 2008). Dr. Yuan Peng is now a senior specialist in American affairs at the Chinese Institute for Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), the research arm of China’s Ministry of State Security. For a discussion of CICIR’s role in the Ministry of State Security see Michael Pillsbury, China Debates the Future Security Environment, National Defense University Press (Washington, D.C.) 2000, pp. 365-366.