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Dec 09, 2004 Presented
by EPOCH TIMES
(Updated: January 12, 2005)
Commentaries
on the Communist Party - Part 1
On
What the Communist Party Is
This is the first of Nine Commentaries
on the Communist Party. Copied here in August 2011
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MAO’S SHADOW:
A mother and son walk through the entrance
of Beijing's Military Museum and are greeted by a large statue of China's
former dictator Mao Zedong. (Stephen Shaver/AFP/Getty Images) |
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For over five thousand years, the Chinese
people created a splendid civilization on the land nurtured by the Yellow
River and 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 include the invasion of Beijing by the Anglo-French Allied Force
in the early 1860s, the Sino-Japanese War in 1894 (also called “Jiawu War”),
and the Russo-Japanese War in China’s northeast in 1906. To these three
episodes of challenge, China responded with the Westernization Movement,
which was marked by the importation of modern goods and weapons, institutional
reforms through the Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898 [1] and the attempt at
the end of the late Qing Dynasty to establish constitutional rule, and
later, the Xinhai Revolution (or Hsinhai Revolution) [2] in 1911.
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 May Fourth Movement [3] would lead to the fourth attempt
at responding to 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. |
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I.
Relying on Violence and Terror to Gain and Maintain Power |
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“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.” [4]
This quote is taken from the concluding paragraph of the Communist Manifesto
, the Communist Party’s principal document. Violence is the one and 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 different 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 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.
Since 1949, the number of deaths caused by CCP’s violence 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 descents, 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 close connections with the
world’s most brutal revolutionary armed forces and despotic regimes. In
addition to the Khmer Rouge, these include the communist parties in Indonesia,
the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Burma, Laos, and Nepal—all of which
were established under 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. Mao’s famous words plainly betray
this logic of the survival of the fittest: “With 800 million people, how
can it work without struggle?”
Another one of Mao’s claims that is
similarly famous is that 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 ruling in China. The goal of using force is
to create terror. Every struggle and movement served as an exercise in
terror, so that the Chinese people trembled in their hearts, submitted
to the terror and gradually became 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 terrorism,
thanks to the apparatus of the state, has been larger in scale, much longer
lasting, and its results more devastating. Today, in the twenty-first century,
we should not forget this inherited character of the Communist Party, since
it will definitely play a crucial role to the destiny of the CCP some time
in the future. |
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II.
Using Lies to Justify Violence |
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The level of civilization can be measured
by the degree to which violence is used in a regime. By resorting to the
use of violence, the Communist regimes clearly represent a huge step backward
in human 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 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 US as a lovable country. We believe this is partly due to the fact
that the US has never occupied China, nor has it launched any attacks on
China. More fundamentally, the Chinese people hold good impressions of
the US 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 since 1999. 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 BC) and the Warring
States period (475-221 BC) 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 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 scoundrel 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. |
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III.
Ever-changing Principles |
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In the 2004 US Presidential Debate
on TV, one presidential candidate said that, one could change tactics when
one needed to, but one should never change his “beliefs” or “core values,”
otherwise “he is just not credible.” [6] This statement really makes clear
a general principle.
The Communist Party is a typical example.
For instance, since its establishment 80 years ago, the CCP has held sixteen
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 filthy 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’s thoughts
and recently Jiang’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 goal remains clear:
gaining and maintaining power, and sustaining absolute control of the 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-US 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
are sustainable and lies mutable. There is wisdom in this saying. |
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IV.
How the Party Nature Replaces and Eliminates Human Nature |
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The CCP is a Leninist authoritarian
regime. Since the inception of the CCP, three basic lines have been established,
i.e., 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 are rewarded, answers that do not comply with common
sense or a child’s human nature. 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, be it ordinary citizens or high-ranking CCP
officials. |
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V.
An Evil Specter Opposes Nature and Human Nature |
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Everything under heaven experiences
a life cycle of birth, maturity, decay, and death.
Unlike the communist regime, non-communist
societies, even those suffering under rigid totalitarian rule and a dictatorship,
often allow some degree of self-organization and self-determination. 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 communist regime is anti-nature in its essence.
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 coommunist 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 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. Laozi 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.” [7] 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
against the universe. |
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VI.
Some Features of Evil Possession |
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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. 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. It penetrates
deeply into every capillary and cell of the society with its finest blood-sucking
vessels and thereby 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.
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 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 will 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. |
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VII.
Examine Oneself and Get Rid of the CCP’s Possession |
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In the Communist Manifesto ,
the first programmatic document of the communist party, Marx proclaimed
that “In 1848, a specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism.”
[8] Over a century later, communism is more than a haunting specter. It
has possessed a concrete, material body. It spread around the world like
an epidemic, killed tens of millions and took 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, 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 Falun Gong, or making another
group its chosen enemy, thereby continuing to exercise the power of terror.
Facing challenges over the past one
hundred 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. |
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Notes:
[1] The Hundred Days' Reform was a 103-day
reform from June 11 to September 21, 1898. Guangxu, Emperor of the Qing
Dynasty (1875-1908), ordered a series of reforms aimed at making sweeping
social and institutional changes. Opposition to the reform was intense
among the conservative ruling elite. Supported by ultraconservatives and
with the tacit support of the political opportunist Yuan Shikai, Empress
Dowager Cixi engineered a coup d'etat on September 21, 1898, forcing
the young reform-minded Guangxu into seclusion. Cixi took over the government
as regent. The Hundred Days’ Reform ended with the rescinding of the new
edicts and the execution of six of the reform’s chief advocates.
[2] Xinhai Revolution (or Hsinhai Revolution),
named for the Chinese year of Xinhai (1911), was the overthrow
(October 10, 1911-February 12, 1912)
of China’s ruling Qing Dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of
China.
[3] The May Fourth Movement was the
first mass movement in modern Chinese history, beginning on May 4, 1919.
[4] From http://eserver.org/marx/1848-communist.manifesto/cm4.txt
[5] Mao Zedong’s letter to his wife
Jiang Qing (1966).
[6] Information from http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=september-30-2004-debate-transcript
[7] Dao De Jing, Chapter 25.
[8] From http://eserver.org/marx/1848-communist.manifesto/cm1.txt |
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