Perpetual Revolution

Word Count: 2917                  PERPETUAL REVOLUTION
                                                           重复革命

Mao Zedong once generally concluded that the “Communist Party must fight for its survival every seven or eight years.[1]” Deng Xiaoping spoke of “killing 200,000 people to ensure 20 years’ stability.” Why does the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), even after having seized control over mainland China in 1949, promote such a mantra? Indeed, from the formation of the PRC in 1949 to the present day, Chinese political-societal development has been characterized by bloody government-led shifts. These shifts, best represented by the Chinese terms ge ming (revolution) and yun dong (lit: movement), are an essential component in the modus operandi set by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to ensure its grip on power, not only in the present but into the future. The shifts serve as a weeding-out process that, over time, has bended and manipulated Chinese society to meet the aforementioned end.

Before further reading, it is necessary to fathom the meanings of the two aforementioned terms. The literal meaning of “ge ming” is in fact “cutting of life,” translated into sensible English as “revolution.” As a result, this term, in Chinese, conveys a certain concept not present in the English equivalent.  This concept is important to grasp as it is a key psychological tool in utilization by the CCP. The term “yun dong,” similarly, carries a meaning not held by the English translation, “movement.” In particular, this word in Chinese refers to political change. More specifically, it conveys an undertone of things to come; not only will the officials of the CCP change, but so will the entire society. Classes once held for heroes might become the scum of society. The laws would change. And most directly, those people of the wrong status at the time of change would suffer humiliation, imprisonment, and death. In this way, “yun dong” can be most properly interpreted as “movement of political upheaval.” These two terms are essential to understanding the unique system of control wrought by the CCP.

Throughout the history of the PRC there been several such movements, such as the Anti-Rightist Movement, the Cultural Revolution, the Reforms of Economy, or the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.  Because there is a pattern to these movements, this phenomenon can be simplified into the term “continuous revolution.” Using the appropriate Chinese characters, it literally means “repeatedly cutting life.” This translation fits uncannily with the earlier quote by Deng Xiaoping as mentioned in the introduction. Furthermore, if one lays out the revolutions in order, it is apparent that that one occurs approximately once a decade.

The first movement, occurring in 1956, was known as the Anti-Rightist movement. This event implicated all the property owners as well as political opponents, both real and imagined, as state enemies, or “Rightists.” About 50 million were charged with this label, and there is as of late no clear estimate on actual figures regarding the loss of life in this period of time, though the number is at least a few millions. This period of time is also associated with the disastrous “Great Leap Forward,” which created multimillion-casualty famines. The next revolution, occurring in the 60’s, was known as the Great Cultural Revolution. This era, lasting until 1976, was characterized by a fanatical indoctrination of the whole nation in the ideas of “Mao Zedong Thought,” embodied in the text of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, by some estimates the world’s most printed book. During this time, traditional ways and culture were ruthlessly cracked down upon in efforts to eradicate the “Four Olds.” As with the Anti-Rightist Movement, it is unknown how many millions were killed, imprisoned, or driven to suicide in this period of time. With Mao’s eventual death in 1976 and the blaming of the disasters of the last quarter century upon the Gang of Four, the new leader, Deng Xiaoping, made radical economic and social reforms, starting China’s path to the free-market society. Greater levels of free political expression, culminating in the events of the Democracy Wall (1979) were at first allowed, but the restricted and individuals who dared fall for the ruse were arrested. The reforms continued, but by 1989, when the Warsaw Pact nations were abandoning communism, thousands of Chinese students appealed in Beijing for democratic reforms, and to counter the protest, the PLA fired upon the students and killed thousands in the events known as the “Tiananmen Square Massacre.” Lastly, in 1999, there was another, yet little-known “movement.” The new, popular spiritual group called Falun Gong, founded in 1992, had attracted over 70 million people across the nation, more than the number of CCP members. Under the orders of President Jiang Zemin, the group was outlawed on July 20th and to date hundreds of thousands of adherents have been detained/tortured, and the number of dead is yet unclear. In addition, during this time, the CCP has taken an increasingly tougher stance on political freedom and has devoted more concentration of the full-scale development of capitalism.

The working behind this mechanism, like many, macropolitical systems, is made possible by manipulation of human psychology, and in particularly, the old Chinese cycle of dynastic leadership, with new ruling families replacing and being replaced over various timeframes. The CCP, in following with this historical pattern, has thus implemented this fluctuation cycle which further validates it as a legitimate ruling force in the eyes of Chinese people. By presenting itself as legitimate, it has accomplished the most rudimentary of its goals: The Heavenly Mandate, or the right to power. Thus, to secure this Mandate, it became necessary for the Communists to carry out huge political programs, in particular the Anti-Rightist Movement and Cultural Revolution, to keep the populace under not just political but psychological control. In the “Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party,” the intent of the Party is made clear:

“Today the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s violence and abuses are even more severe than those of the tyrannical Qin Dynasty. The CCP’s philosophy is one of “struggle,” and the CCP’s rule has been built upon a series of “class struggles,” “path struggles,” and “ideological struggles,” both in China and toward other nations.”

The explanation continues:

“As its founding philosophy is one of “class struggle,” the CCP has spared no efforts since taking power to commit class genocide, and has achieved its reign of terror by means of violent revolution. Killing and brainwashing have been used hand in hand to suppress any beliefs other than communist theory. The CCP has launched one movement after another to portray itself as infallible and godlike. Following its theories of class struggle and violent revolution, the CCP has… purge[d] dissidents and opposing social classes, using violence and deception to force all Chinese people to become the obedient servants of its tyrannical rule.” (Page 64, Commentary Three)[2]

In short, the CCP makes use of systematic societal-level operant conditioning to achieve the image of superiority, which is essential to the maintenance of power and control. This social conditioning process has been observed on a small scale by the famous Milgram Study and Stanford Prison Experiment, in which subjects quickly assumed the roles they were given by authority figures, and heeded their instructions even if they exceeded the limits of their individual ethics and morals[3]. Since the programs undertaken by the CCP under Mao have severely affected and remained in the collective Chinese psyche, the culture of China was thus altered beyond all previous levels.

Of course the revolutions are not without their risks, as they generally create great political upheaval, which is dangerous. The chaos created by each event unavoidably decreases the Party’s control for some time, during which time factions in the Party (evidenced during the Cultural Revolution, where local Party bosses would form their own cliques and bicker and even wage war against enemy factions) or the military may take over. Even if the CCP observed some regulations and laws in the beginning of these mobilizations, by the time it has incited people to join in, nothing could stop the slaughter. For example, when the CCP was carrying out its land reform, a land reform committee could decide on the life and death of landlords.  However, for the CCP, this is a risk worth taking, as with each bloodletting, the Party renews its position and avoids stagnation of rule.

To fully make use of the potential psychological prizes brought about by the terror as a result of the killing, the CCP employs many tactics as to be sure that the effects soak every level and class of society. Notable methods include the targeting of property owners, scholars, religious believers, and those in any way affiliated with people belonging to the targeted groups. In 1957, Mao started the “Let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend” campaign, which encouraged the intellectuals to come out and voice their opinions. In reality, this was but a clever ruse to identify who the potential enemies were, and thus Mao had half a million scholars and learned persons fired from their positions, incarcerated, or killed.[4] The CCP mobilized mass campaigns inside and outside the Party, starting to kill in the areas of literature, art, theatre, history and education. The CCP targeted the first attacks on several famous people such as the "Three-Family Village," Liu Shaoqi, Wu Han, Lao She, and Jian Bozan. Later, the number of people killed increased to "a small group inside the Party" and "a small group inside the army," and finally, the killing escalated from among all inside the Party and army to all the people around the country.[5] Religious persecution was also similarly brutal. In addition to the direct means of destroying religious beliefs and practices (desecrating temples and monuments, killing monks), the CCP would also infiltrate the Buddhist temples and thereby further undermine the traditional ways and philosophies. Similarly, Christianity was treated with similar ways:
In 1950, Wu Yaozong [51] formed a “Three-Self” Church, which followed the principles of self-administration, self-support and self-propagation. He claimed that they would break away from “imperialism” and actively join the “War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.” A good friend of his was imprisoned for over 20 years for refusing to join the Three-Self and suffered all kinds of torture and humiliation. When he asked Wu Yaozong, “How do you regard the miracles Jesus performed?” Wu answered, “I have discarded all of them.”[6]

The active sabotage of religion by the CCP was extremely effective in marginalizing their influence on society, and this is evidenced by the modern-day phenomenon of religion having a very small presence in China today. All forms of belief and pre-Communist philosophy, such as the teachings of Confucius, have been effectively repressed into the subconscious and when vented out of the mind, must come out of a vent fashioned by Communist ideology. It is a currently a popular idea that the high levels of corruption  existing in the PRC today are attributed to certain Confucian teachings, but in retrospect this may have actually been the result of the Party’s protracted revolutions that have totally revised common ethics and moral creeds.

Mao Zedong himself is evidenced to have conscious knowledge of what he was doing for the duration of his rule, according to his sayings from “Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong.” Veiled thinly behind terms such as “counterrevolutionaries,” “reactionaries,” and “revolution,” Mao states a fair amount of his intents in China’s most widely-printed book. In dealing with potential threats, he states:
“After the enemies with guns have been wiped out, there will still be enemies without guns; they are bound to struggle desperately against us, and we must never regard these enemies lightly.”

In essence, what Mao is referring to is the need to attack enemies that are not obvious or that not do even assume the form of opponents beforehand, fitting in with the Party’s way of operation as described above. Mao also spoke of “the influence of the bourgeoisie and of the intellectuals who will remain in the country for a long time...,” the “necessity of waging the struggle in the ideological field,” and “Revolutionary war [being] an antitoxin which not only eliminates the enemy’s poison but also purges us of our own filth.”[7][8] From these stated truisms, it is plain to see that Mao and the CCP held no doubts about their methods.  

In recent decades, the CCP tends to kill much less than before, when millions or tens of millions would be sacrificed. There are two motives for this change. First, all levels and classes of society have already been thoroughly inundated by the bloodshed and psychological conditioning of the CCP, and like Pavlov’s dogs, which drooled to the sound of a bell even after the food was gone, the people of China have accepted the Party’s movements, be they real or paper tigers, as conditioned stimuli that work even without massive slaughter.  Secondly and more importantly, the Chinese regime has transitioned. In adapting to the rise of globalization at the end of the Soviet Union, the PRC has taken the path of economic reformation. [9]

The economic reformation has indeed changed China tremendously. The economic and cultural situation is much different than the Soviet-inspired Mao era. But the CCP would not show any signs of fatigue, as Western observers had predicted. In the 2008 book “The China Fantasy” by James Mann, the notion held by the mainstream political thinkers of the West, that increased capitalism would bring democracy to China, is in fact explained as incredibly naïve and far from the truth. Mann submits that the Party has changed in such a way that it can sustainably retain it’s stranglehold on power while the economy grows on a parallel and not crossing path. [10] But has the Party truly changed? Its structure remains the same. There is still a non-democratic Politburo, with no say from the people whatsoever. And when the people demand their say, or in some other way overstep the boundary between economic and intellectual/political freedom, the government needs only to react and the people will calm down again. The mindset of terror implemented by the CCP is alive and well, and is shown to be totally compatible with capitalism. Capitalism has made China rich. It has marked a shift from the old, inefficient command economy. And importantly, it has bought the Party at least a few easy decades of rule.  

Occasionally the government does act, and will bring out some nightmare from Mao’s time. The two most significant examples that come to mind are the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989 and the persecution of Falun Gong ten years later. The 6/4 Massacre re-averted the minds of the people away from politics, and the crackdown on Falun Gong, which had attracted over 50 million followers, served to dissuade a resurgence of spirituality which might then lead to a renewed interest in things such as ancient culture or philosophy, which might have created unforeseen political consequences. In following with the late Mao’s words, the Party, with the aid of its 6-10 office (the group formed specially to deal with Falun Gong), moved to deal with the “enemy without guns.”
The essay “Why the Chinese Communists are Not Doomed to Finish Yet,” by dissident Wan Runnan, mentions the “good wolf” axiom. Because the CCP does not persecute the entirety of Chinese society all at once, and because it periodically “reforms” itself the intellectual class has developed a tendency of concentrating on the positive aspects of the CCP, and extrapolating these positives in hopes that the Party will realize the promised reforms. [11] However, the Party can always fall back on some event (such as Tiananmen) and hint that the nation is not ready for democracy or human rights yet. Coupled with the knowledge that China’s economy is getting ever-more powerful, the learned people will largely pass off the CCP’s actions as justified, seeing them as necessary for China’s further development. In manipulating the intellectual class, the CCP has achieved the goal of all but silencing organized opposition to its authority. Therefore, it is said that the intellectuals have become stuck looking for “good wolves.”

The unnatural and brutal revolutions and shifts underwent by the Chinese people in the last 60 years have manipulated their mindsets so that they will self-censor any dangerous thought, and redirect their negative emotions onto others. Gao Zhisheng, a renowned Chinese human rights lawyer, described in his book “A China More Just” the extents and absurdities that the police and thugs hired by government officials would go to in order to harass and psychologically torment him, his family, and other activists. He also describes his experience in the courts of China, where not even the judges and lawyers had “any understanding of the law.”[12] The Party does not mind if the civil servants undermine the laws, so long as they do not reject the CCP or criticize it.

Ultimately, over the course of the Party’s rule, the Chinese nation has seen numerous brutal and bloody social upheavals, which have been brought about by the Maoist ideology of continuous revolution. The Party has continually sought bloodshed and calculated chaos to guarantee its own power, at the expense of the people, culture and nation of China, like overfarmed land depleted into desert. Through so much death, torture, starvation, spiritual void and outright oppression, there is nothing stable in the Chinese world, nothing, save the undying red image of the invincible and long-lived Chinese Communist Party, itself now a shell serving only the dark, neverending depths of corruption and dystopia.


WORKS CITED

1: Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party
[1] [2] [4] [5] [6] [9]
2: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung
[7] [8]
3: The China Fantasy
[10]
4: Why the Chinese Communists are Not Doomed to Finish Yet
zonaeuropa.com/20060511_2.htm
[11]
5: A China more Just
[12]
6. Milgram Experiment www.yalealumnimagazine.com/iss…
[3]
7. Stanford Experiment
www.holah.karoo.net/zimbardost…
[3]