Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Where each individual labors for the common good

Life and Death in Shanghai
by Nien Cheng (1986)

[page 23] "Disillusioned by the inability of the Kuomintang government to cope with pressing postwar economic problems and institute reform, they [the Chinese intellectuals] welcomed the Communist takeover in 1949 as an opportunity for peace and stability.

"In those days, because of the Kuomintang blackout of all news about the Communist area, very few Chinese living in Shanghai had any real understanding of Marxism, the Chinese Communist Party, or Mao Zedong. Almost no one knew about the persecution of intellectuals carried out in Yanan in 1942 . . . The only source of information for Chinese intellectuals about the Chinese Communist Party before 1949 had been the glowing accounts of Western journalists and writers who had made fleeting visits to the Communist-held area of China. These men were liberal idealists. They were impressed by the austerity, discipline, and singleness of purpose of the Communist leaders [page 24] but they did not have a deep understanding of either the character of these men or the philosophy that motivated them. When the Communist Party intensified its propaganda effort through its underground in Kuomintang-governed cities prior to the final military push to take over the country, its promises of peaceful national reconstruction, of a united front including all sections of Chinese society, and of a democratic form of government sounded an attractive alternative to the corrupt and ineffectual rule of the Kuomintang. And the Chinese intellectuals accepted the propaganda effort as a sincere and honest declaration of policy by the Chinese Communist Party."

". . . [when in 1950] Mao Zedong, anxious to put all universities under Party control, initiated the Thought Reform Movement [the intellectuals] had their first rude awakening."

[page 89] "'It's the objective of the proletarian revolution [said Cheng's interrogator] to form a classless society in which each individual labors for the common good and enjoys the fruit of that labor, and were no one is above anyone else.'"

[page 90] "It was an attractive and idealistic picture. I used to believe in it too when I was a student. But after living in Communist China for the past seventeen years, I knew that such a society was only a dream because those who seized power would invariably become the new ruling class. They would have the power to control the people's lives and bend the people's will. Because they controlled the production and distribution of goods and services in the name of the state, they would also enjoy material luxuries beyond the reach of the common people. In Communist China, the private lives of the leaders were guarded as state secrets. But every Chinese knew that the Party leaders lived in spacious mansions with many servants, obtained their provisions from special shops where luxury goods were made available to their households at nominal prices, and sent their children in chauffeur-driven cars to exclusive schools to be taught by specially selected teachers."

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