Commentary 1: On What the Communist Party Is
FOREWORD
For over 5,000 years, the Chinese people created a splendid civilization on the land nurtured by the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. During this long period of time, dynasties came and went, and the Chinese culture waxed and waned. Grand and moving stories have played out on the historical stage of China.
The year 1840, the year commonly considered by historians as the beginning of China’s contemporary era, marked the start of China’s journey from tradition to modernization. Chinese civilization experienced four major episodes of challenge and response. The first three episodes included the invasion of Beijing by the Anglo-French Allied Force in the early 1860s, the Sino-Japanese War in 1894 (also called the “Jiawu War”), and the Russo-Japanese War in China’s northeast in 1906.
To these three episodes of challenge, China responded first with the Westernization Movement, which was marked by the importation of modern goods and weapons.
China next responded with the institutional reforms in 1898 known as the Hundred Days’ Reform and the attempt at the end of the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) to establish constitutional rule. China’s third response, in 1911, was the Xinhai Revolution (or Hsinhai Revolution).[1]
At the end of the First World War, China, though it emerged victorious, was not listed among the stronger powers at that time. Many Chinese believed that the first three episodes of response had failed.
The number of deaths caused by the CCP’s violence since 1949 surpasses that of the wars waged between 1921 and 1949.
The May Fourth Movement[2] would lead to the fourth attempt at responding to the previous challenges and culminate in the complete westernization of Chinese culture through the communist movement and its extreme revolution.
This article concerns the outcome of the last episode, which is the communist movement and the Communist Party. Let’s take a close look at the result of what China chose, or perhaps one can say, what was imposed on China after over 160 years, nearly 100 million unnatural deaths, and the destruction of nearly all Chinese traditional culture and civilization.
I. RELYING ON VIOLENCE AND TERROR
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”[3] This quote is taken from the concluding paragraph of the “Communist Manifesto,” the Communist Party’s principal document. Violence is the single, main means by which the Communist Party gained power. This character trait has been passed on to all subsequent forms of the Party that have arisen since its birth.
In fact, the world’s first Communist Party was established many years after Karl Marx’s death. The next year after the October Revolution in 1917, the “All Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik),” later to be known as the “Communist Party of the Soviet Union,” was born.
This party grew out of the use of violence against “class enemies” and was maintained through violence against party members and ordinary citizens. During Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union slaughtered over 20 million so-called spies and traitors and those thought to have unorthodox opinions.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) first started as a branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the Third Communist International. Therefore, it naturally inherited the willingness to kill.
During China’s first Communist-Kuomintang[4] civil war between 1927 and 1936, the population in Jiangxi Province dropped from over 20 million to about 10 million. The damage wrought by the CCP’s use of violence can be seen from these figures alone.
Using violence may be unavoidable when attempting to gain political power, but there has never been a regime as eager to kill as the CCP, especially during otherwise peaceful periods. The number of deaths caused by the CCP’s violence since 1949, when the CCP had won the civil war against the Kuomintang and unified China, has surpassed the total deaths during the wars waged between 1921 and 1949.
An excellent example of the Communist Party’s use of violence is its support of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. Under the Khmer Rouge, a quarter of Cambodia’s population, including a majority of Chinese immigrants and their descendants, were murdered. China still blocks the international community from putting the Khmer Rouge on trial, so as to cover up the CCP’s notorious role in the genocide.
The CCP has had close connections with the world’s most brutal, revolutionary armed forces and despotic regimes. In addition to the Khmer Rouge, these have included the communist parties in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Burma, Laos, and Nepal—all of which were established with the support of the CCP. Many leaders in these communist parties are Chinese; some of them are still hiding in China to this day.
Other Maoist-based communist parties include South America’s Shining Path and the Japanese Red Army, whose atrocities have been condemned by the world community.
One of the theories the communists employ is social Darwinism. The Communist Party applies Darwin’s inter-species competition to human relationships and human history, maintaining that class struggle is the only driving force for societal development.
Struggle, therefore, became the primary “belief” of the Communist Party, a tool in gaining and maintaining political control. For instance, a famous quote from Mao—“With 800 million people, how can it work without struggle?”— reveals the logic of “survival of the fittest.”
According to another similarly famous quote from Mao, the Cultural Revolution should be conducted “every seven or eight years.”[5] Repetitive use of force is an important means for the CCP to maintain its rule in China.
The goal of using force is to create terror. Every struggle and movement has served as an exercise in terror, so that the Chinese people tremble in their hearts, submit to the terror, and gradually become enslaved under the CCP’s control.
Today, terrorism has become the main enemy of the civilized and free world. The CCP’s exercise of violent terror, thanks to the apparatus of the state, has been larger in scale, much longer lasting, and its results more devastating. Today, in the 21st century, we should not forget this inherited character of the Communist Party, since it will definitely play a crucial role in the destiny of the CCP for some time into the future.
II. USING LIES TO JUSTIFY VIOLENCE
The level of a regime’s civilization can be measured by the degree to which it uses violence. By resorting to the use of violence, the communist regimes clearly represent a huge step backward in the level of civilization. Unfortunately, the Communist Party has been seen as progressive by those who believe that violence is an essential and inevitable means to societal advancement.
This acceptance of violence has to be viewed as one result of an unrivaled and skillful employment of deception and lies by the Communist Party, which is another inherited trait of the CCP.
“Since a young age, we have thought of the U.S. as a lovable country. We believe this is partly due to the fact that the U.S. has never occupied China, nor has it launched any attacks on China. More fundamentally, the Chinese people hold good impressions of the U.S. based on the democratic and open-minded character of its people.”
This excerpt came from an editorial published on July 4, 1947, in the CCP’s official newspaper Xinhua Daily. A mere three years later, the CCP sent soldiers to fight American troops in North Korea and painted the Americans as the most evil imperialists in the world.
Every Chinese from mainland China would be astonished to read this editorial written over 50 years ago. The CCP has banned all publications quoting similar early passages and published rewritten versions.
Since coming to power, the CCP has employed similar artifices in every single movement, including its elimination of counter-revolutionaries (1950–1953), the “partnership” of public and private enterprises (1954–1957), the Anti-Rightist Movement (1957), the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the Tiananmen Square Massacre (1989), and, most recently, the persecution of Falun Gong, which began in 1999.
The Communist Party’s evolving principles have largely contradicted one another.
The most infamous instance was the persecution of intellectuals in 1957. The CCP called on the intellectuals to offer their opinions, but then persecuted them as “rightists,” using their own speeches as evidence of their “crimes.”
When some criticized the persecution as a conspiracy or “plot in the dark,” Mao claimed publicly, “That is not a plot in the dark, but a stratagem in the open.”
Deception and lies have played a very important role in the CCP’s gaining and maintaining control. China enjoys the longest and most complete history in the world, and Chinese intellectuals have had the greatest faith in history since ancient times. The Chinese people have used history to assess current reality and even to achieve personal spiritual improvement.
To make history serve the current regime, the CCP has made a practice of altering and concealing historical truth. The CCP in its propaganda and publications has rewritten history for periods from as early as the Spring and Autumn period (770–476 B.C.) and the Warring States period (475–221 B.C.) to as recently as the Cultural Revolution.
Such historical alterations have continued for the more than 50 years since 1949, and all efforts to restore historical truth have been ruthlessly blocked and eliminated by the CCP.
When violence becomes too weak by itself to sustain control, the CCP resorts to deception and lies, which serve to justify and mask the rule by violence.
One must admit that deception and lies were not invented by the Communist Party, but are age-old unscrupulous acts that the Communist Party has utilized without shame.
The CCP promised land to the peasants, factories to the workers, freedom and democracy to the intellectuals, and peace to all. None of these promises has ever been realized. One generation of Chinese died deceived and another generation continues to be cheated. This is the biggest sorrow of the Chinese people, the most unfortunate aspect of the Chinese nation.
III. EVER-CHANGING PRINCIPLES
In one of the televised U.S. presidential debates in 2004, one presidential candidate said that one could change tactics when one needed to, but one should never change his “beliefs” or “core values.” [6] Otherwise, he is not credible. This statement makes clear a general principle.
The Communist Party is a typical example. For instance, since its establishment 80 years ago, the CCP has held 16 national representative conventions and modified the Party Constitution 16 times. Over the five decades since it came to power, the CCP has made five major modifications to the Chinese Constitution.
The ideal of the Communist Party is social equality leading to a communist society. Today, however, communist-controlled China has become a nation with the most serious economic inequalities in the world. Many CCP members have become extremely rich, while the country has 800 million living in poverty.
The guiding theories of the CCP started with Marxism-Leninism, to which was added Maoism, and then Deng Xiaopeng’s thoughts, and recently Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents.” Marxism-Leninism and Maoism are not at all compatible with Deng’s theories and Jiang’s ideology—they are actually opposite to them. This hodgepodge of communist theories employed by the CCP is indeed a rarity in human history.
The Communist Party’s evolving principles have largely contradicted one another. From the idea of a global integration transcending the nation-state to today’s extreme nationalism, from eliminating all private ownership and all exploitative classes to today’s notion of promoting capitalists to join the party, yesterday’s principles have become reversed in today’s politics, with further change expected tomorrow.
No matter how often the CCP changes its principles, the goals remain clear: gaining and maintaining power and sustaining absolute control of society.
In the history of the CCP, there have been more than a dozen movements that are “life and death” struggles. In reality, all of these struggles have coincided with the transfer of power following changes of basic Party principles.
Every change in principles has come from an inevitable crisis faced by the CCP, threatening its legitimacy and survival. Whether it be collaborating with the Kuomintang Party, a pro-U.S. foreign policy, economic reform and market expansion, or promoting nationalism—each of these decisions occurred at a moment of crisis, and all had to do with gaining or solidifying power. Every cycle of a group suffering persecution followed by reversal of that persecution has been connected with changes in the basic principles of the CCP.
A Western proverb states that truths endure and lies pass away. There is wisdom in this saying.
IV. HOW THE PARTY NATURE REPLACES AND ELIMINATES HUMAN NATURE
The CCP is a Leninist authoritarian regime. Since the inception of the CCP, three basic lines have been established: the intellectual line, the political line, and the organization line.
The intellectual line refers to the Communist Party’s philosophical foundation. The political line refers to setting up goals. The organization line refers to how the goals are achieved within the format of strict organization.
The first and foremost requirement of all CCP members and those ruled by the CCP is to obey commands unconditionally. This is what the organization line is all about.
In China, most people know about the double personalities of CCP members. In private settings, CCP members are ordinary human beings with feelings of happiness, anger, sorrow, and joy. They possess ordinary human beings’ merits and shortcomings. They may be parents, husbands, wives, or friends.
But placed above human nature and feelings is the Party nature, which, according to the requirements of the Communist Party, transcends humanity. Thus, humanity becomes relative and changeable, while Party nature becomes absolute, beyond any doubt or challenge.
During the Cultural Revolution, it was all too common that fathers and sons tortured each other, husbands and wives struggled with each other, mothers and daughters reported on each other, and students and teachers treated each other as enemies.
Party nature motivated the conflicts and hatred in these cases. During the early period of the CCP rule, many high-ranking CCP officials were helpless as their family members were labeled as class enemies. This, again, was driven by Party nature.
The power of the Party nature over the individual results from the CCP’s prolonged course of indoctrination. This training starts in preschools and kindergartens, where Party-sanctioned answers to questions—answers that do not comply with common sense or a child’s human nature—are rewarded.
Students receive political education when they attend primary school, middle school, and all the way to college, and they learn to follow Party-sanctioned standard answers; otherwise, they are not allowed to pass the exam and graduate.
A Party member must remain consistent with the Party line when speaking publicly, no matter how he feels privately.
The organizational structure of the CCP is a gigantic pyramid, with the central power on top controlling the entire hierarchy. This unique structure is one of the most important features of the CCP regime, one that helps produce absolute conformity.
Today, the CCP has completely degenerated into a political entity struggling to maintain self-interest. It no longer pursues any of the lofty goals of communism. However, the organizational structure of communism remains, and its demand for unconditional conformity has not changed.
This Party, situating itself above humanity and human nature, removes any organizations or persons deemed detrimental or potentially detrimental to its own power, whether ordinary citizens or high-ranking CCP officials.
V. AN EVIL SPECTER OPPOSES NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE
Ancient Chinese society was in fact ruled according to a binary structure. In rural regions, clans were the center of an independent social organization, while urban areas were organized around the guild. The top-down government did not extend below the county level.
The Nazi regime, perhaps the cruelest regime under a dictatorship other than the Communist Party, still allowed rights to private property. The communist regimes eradicated any forms of social organization or elements independent of the Party, replacing them with highly centralized power structures from the top down.
If the bottom-up social structures allow for the self-determination of individuals or groups to occur naturally, then the essence of the communist regime opposes nature.
The Communist Party does not hold universal standards for human nature. The concepts of good and evil, as well as all laws and rules, are arbitrarily manipulated. Communists do not allow murder, except for those categorized as enemies by the Communist Party. Filial piety is welcomed, except for those parents deemed class enemies.
Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faithfulness are all good, but not applicable when the Party is not willing or doesn’t want to consider these traditional virtues.
The Communist Party completely overthrows the universal standards for human nature and builds itself on principles that oppose human nature.
Non-communist societies generally consider humanity’s dual nature of good and evil, and they rely on fixed social contracts to maintain a balance in society.
In communist societies, however, the very concept of human nature is denied, and neither good nor evil is acknowledged. Eliminating the concepts of good and evil, according to Marx, serves to completely overthrow the superstructure[7] of the old society.
The Communist Party does not believe in God, nor does it even respect physical nature. “Battle with heaven, fight with the earth, struggle with humans—therein lies endless joy.” This was the motto of the CCP during the Cultural Revolution. Great suffering was inflicted on the Chinese people and the land.
The Chinese traditionally believe in the unity of heaven and human beings. Lao Zi said in “Dao De Jing” (“Tao-Te Ching”), “Man follows the earth, the earth follows heaven, heaven follows the Dao, and the Dao follows what is natural.”[8] Human beings and nature exist within a harmonious relationship in the continuous cosmos.
The Communist Party is a kind of being. However, it opposes nature, heaven, earth, and mankind. It is an evil specter opposing the universe.
VI. SOME FEATURES OF EVIL POSSESSION
The Communist Party’s organs themselves never participate in productive or creative activities. Once they grasp power, they attach themselves to the people, controlling and manipulating them. They extend their power down to the most basic unit of society for fear of losing control. They monopolize the resources of production and extract wealth from the society.
In China, the CCP extends everywhere and controls everything, but nobody has ever seen the CCP’s accounting records; only accounting records for the state, local governments, and enterprises are accessible.
From the central government to the village committees in rural areas, the municipal officials are always ranked lower than the communist cadres, so the municipal governments have to follow instructions from the Communist Party committees of the same level. The expenditures of the Party are supplied by the municipal units and accounted for in the municipal system.
The organization of the CCP, like a giant evil possessing spirit, attaches to every single unit and cell of the Chinese society as tightly as a shadow following an object. The CCP’s finest blood-sucking vessels penetrate deeply into every capillary and cell of the society, and thus the Party controls and manipulates society.
This peculiar structure of evil possession has existed in human history in the past, either partially or temporarily. Never has it operated for so long and controlled a society so completely as under the rule of the Communist Party.
People who are robbed of private property also lose a free mind and spirit.
For this reason, Chinese farmers live in such poverty and drudgery. They not only have to support the traditional municipal officials, but also as many or even more communist cadres.
For this reason, Chinese workers have lost their employment in vast numbers. The omnipresent blood-sucking vessels of the possessing CCP have been extracting funds from their factories for many years.
For this reason, Chinese intellectuals find it so difficult to gain intellectual freedom. In addition to their administrators, there are CCP shadows lingering everywhere, doing nothing but monitoring people.
A possessing spirit has to control absolutely the mind of the possessed in order to drain energy for its survival.
According to modern political science, power comes from three main sources: force, wealth, and knowledge. The Communist Party has never hesitated to use monopoly control and force to rob people of their property.
More importantly, it has deprived people of their freedoms of speech and of the press. It has raped people’s spirit, and it will do anything in order to maintain its absolute control of power. From this aspect, the CCP’s evil possession controls society so tightly that it can hardly be compared to any other regime in the world.
VII. GET RID OF THE CCP’S POSSESSION
In the “Communist Manifesto,” the first programmatic document of the communist party, Marx proclaimed, “In 1848, a specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism.”[9]
Over a century later, communism is more than a haunting specter: It has possessed a concrete, material body. It has spread around the world like an epidemic, killed tens of millions, and taken away property and a free mind and spirit from hundreds of millions.
The basic tenet of the Communist Party is to take away all private property so as to eliminate the “exploitative class.” Private property is the basis of all social rights and often carries national culture. People who are robbed of private property also lose a free mind and spirit. They may further lose the freedom to acquire social and political rights.
Facing a crisis of survival, the CCP was forced to reform China’s economy in the 1980s. Some of the rights to private property were restored to the people. This created a hole in the massive CCP machine of precise control. This hole has become enlarged as the CCP’s members strive to accumulate their private fortunes.
The CCP, an evil possessing specter supported by force, deception, and the frequent change of its appearance and images, has now shown signs of decay and is nervous at every slight disturbance. It attempts to survive by accumulating more wealth and tightening control, but these actions only serve to intensify the crisis.
Today’s China appears prosperous, but social conflicts have been built up to a level never seen before. Using political intrigues from the past, the CCP may attempt some sort of retreat, redressing the Tiananmen Square massacre or the persecution of Falun Gong, or making another group its chosen enemy, thereby continuing to exercise the power of terror.
Facing challenges over the past 100 years, the Chinese nation has responded by importing weapons, reforming its systems, and enacting extreme and violent revolutions. Countless lives have been lost, and most of the Chinese traditional culture has been abandoned.
It appears that the responses have failed. When agitation and anxiety occupied the Chinese mind, the CCP took the opportunity to enter the scene, and eventually controlled this last surviving ancient civilization in the world.
In future challenges, the Chinese people will inevitably have to choose again. No matter how the choice is made, every Chinese must understand that any lingering hope in the CCP will only worsen the damage done to the Chinese nation and inject new energy into this evil possessing CCP.
We must abandon all illusions, thoroughly exam ourselves without being influenced by hatred, greed, or desires. Only then can we rid ourselves of the nightmarish control by the possessing spirit of the CCP over the last 50 years. In the name of a free nation, we can reestablish the Chinese civilization based on respect for human nature and compassion for all.
NOTES:
[1] Xinhai Revolution (or Hsinhai Revolution), named for the Chinese year of Xinhai (1911), was the overthrow (Oct. 10, 1911–Feb. 12, 1912) of China’s ruling Qing Dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China.
[2] The May Fourth Movement was the first mass movement in modern Chinese history, beginning on May 4, 1919.
[3] From www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch04.htm
[4] The Kuomintang (KMT) or Chinese Nationalist Party originated in 1912 and ruled much of China from 1928 until its defeat by the CCP in 1949.
[5] Mao Zedong’s letter to his wife Jiang Qing (1966).
[6] From www.debates.org/index.php?page=september-30-2004-debate-transcript
[7] Superstructure in the context of Marxist social theory refers to the way of interaction between human subjectivity and the material substance of society.
[8] From Chapter 25 of “Tao-Te Ching” or “Dao De Jing,” one of the most important Taoist texts, written by Lao Zi or Lao Tze (Lao Tzu).
[9] From www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
