Bao Tong: China celebrates 64 years as a Republic founded on the oppression of the people
Beijing (AsiaNews/Rfa) - Today [yesterday] is Oct. 1. It has been 24 years since the orchestrators of the main theme tune started to avoid any reference to 6 and 4 [numbers associated with the military crackdown of June 4, 1989]. But today, they can't hide from it, because it is the 64th anniversary of their seizure of power. There used to be a time when the orchestrators of the main theme tune didn't deny that they had seized power. If we look at Mao Zedong's scriptwriter Hu Qiaomu's 1951 article titled "30 Years of Chinese Communism," we can see this very clearly.
Back then, no effort was made to avoid talking about the seizure of power. On
the contrary, it was spoken about with evident happiness. If they'd stopped
talking about it, then where would all their greatness, glory, and rightness be
found? Later, this concept of the seizure of power that implied so much, so
aptly, was gradually dropped in favor of a mysterious concept called
"constructing the country." It seems that Chinese people had no
nationality prior to [1949], as if the changing of the country's name [to the
People's Republic of China] signaled its subjugation. However, even some of the
older people got used to being assimilated over time. I was one of them.
But "Oct. 1" wasn't a unique historical event. As far back as 1911,
the old imperial regime had already been toppled by revolution, under the
banner of the Three Principles of the People [of Sun Yat-sen]. Before this,
China was characterized by authoritarianism. The emperor was the Son of Heaven.
If you were Chinese, then you were the subject of the emperor, and you had to
follow his orders. After the 1911 revolution, with the exception of the [brief]
rule of the self-styled "Hongxian Emperor" and biggest warlord Yuan
Shikai, no serious politican would dare to be openly hostile towards the
republic, or towards democracy.
Citizens' rights 'a heresy'
Things all went downhill after the "liberation" that took place on
Oct. 1, 1949, however. The notion of citizens' rights was once more treated as
heresy. Under the aegis of the "dictatorship of the proletariat,"
another dictatorship arose, as if this were only right and proper. The [ruling
Chinese] Communist Party exerted its rule over all areas of society, far more
than any tyrant or monarch ever could. The "liberated" Chinese people
now had to obey the Party, and were dominated by the Party.
During the period from 1911-1949, this old-new, or new-old phenomenon would
have appeared as a monstrous absurdity. But after "Liberation," it came back to life. The corpse of the
proletariat and their autocratic revolution was reanimated under the leadership
of the Communist Party. The power of the leadership was the spoils of victory,
which of course weren't to be enjoyed by the corpse of the revolution and the
proletarian masses. They belonged to those who had made the revolution happen
and their descendants, and were "not for sharing," as Lenin put it,
"not even for a moment," as Mao put it.
The Chinese Communist Party gave full play to the booty of war that was its
authority, using it to visit wave upon wave of unprecedented torment [on the
nation]. First of all, it led the farmers in a violent seizure of land from the
landowners, after which it demanded that the land they had just seized for
their own be given back to the state in the form of the People's Communes. They
nationalized private enterprises before handing them over to powerful cliques
and interest groups, dividing up the majority of them under the guise of
price-setting, so that they became a new breed of socialist private
enterprises.
Changing names
And so it went on. The names they gave to things always sounded exciting. Sometimes
they called it "revolution," sometimes they called it
"reform." But it was all part of that "socialism" that
nobody could really explain clearly, as Deng Xiaoping put it...all in
accordance with universal truth, Chinese characteristics, not to mention the
teachings of Mao, Deng, and the "Three Represents [of former president
Jiang Zemin]."
In 1927, China was in the middle of the warlord period and on the edge of a
slippery slope, but it still ranked as the second-largest economy in the world,
owing to the fact that it had the biggest labor force on the planet. Under the
mismanagement of the Communist Party, China's economic output plummeted,
plunging into the abyss and bringing the country to the brink of collapse. This
went on until after Mao's death, when some of the more obvious chains binding
those who produced things and those who owned things were finally broken, and
not without a lot of trouble.
Still, it wasn't easy for us to regain our glorious No. 2 economic ranking that
we had occupied at the time of the warlords. [It seems that] one pretty thing
can cover up 100 really ugly ones. The past 64 years haven't been an exercise
in futility; they have been the tuition fees we have paid for having [such]
leaders. That the normal state has been one of revolution is eloquent testimony
to the "universal truth" that the Chinese people must be led by the
Communist Party.
Miscarriages of justice
Of course, paying our "tuition fees" has nothing to do with blindly
mucking about or going off on random detours. Of course, life is one of the
currencies in which such tuition fees are paid! How many homes have been
broken, and how many people have died in battle, of starvation, through
political "struggle," or by lawless injustice, or by those who use
the letter of the law as an excuse to deliberately mete out miscarriages of
justice?
Alienation is another currency in which tuition fees must be paid.
Anyone who lives in China lives in a place that is hostile to universal values.
The "republic" is a country where elections cannot take place.
"Market economics" means an economy that depends on the coordinating
operations of the Party. Opinions can only come from the Party mouthpiece,
while education is a cradle and a hell that serves only to train up followers.
Of course, it is the duty of the people to act as the tool of the Party. The
touchstone for deciding the difference between truth and rumor can't be the
facts, but must be Party interests. As for all-pervasive corruption and the
pollution of nature-air pollution, river pollution, and land contamination-they
are all of them part of the "tuition fees" that generation upon
generation of citizens must pay against their will and without their consent,
so that generation upon generation of leaders can continue to conduct their
laboratory experiments.
This is the China model that took 64 years to build, and which has raised
eyebrows around the world. The Chinese Communist Party will have made its own
internal meaning from this, be it "mucking about" or "learning
curve," while the system it has built is the face it presents to the
world.
I have no intention of belittling its existence. I just think a system that
can't tolerate objection is one that is doomed to extinction. Progress belongs
to those brave souls who are ambitious enough to change their ways.
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