Banned Book ‘Tombstone’ Chinese Author Yang Jisheng Receives Literary Prize in New York

A former senior editor for the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda mouthpiece collected the Manhattan Institute’s Hayek Prize Wednesday night.

The book award is given by the libertarian-leaning think tank to acknowledge recent works that “best reflect Hayek’s vision of economic and individual liberty.” It comes with a $50,000 cash prize.

Law Professor’s New Book Says China Plans to Take Over Taiwan by 2012

NTD TV, Dec. 2, 2009-

An exiled Chinese law professor has written a book called “Taiwan Disaster.” In it, he says the Chinese Communist Party is planning to make Taiwan part of the People’s Republic of China by 2012. He spoke at a press conference last week in Taipei.

[Yuan Hongbing, Exiled Law Professor]:
“The truth is, the tyrant Chinese Communist Party is planning to, by 2012, comprehensively—through political, economic, cultural and social fronts—infiltrate Taiwan, to control Taiwan’s democratic system, and to further eradicate Taiwan’s democratic system.”

Yuan says much of his book is based on classified information. His book cites a 2008 document issued by the Central Government. It says that reunification “should be achieved by comprehensive unification efforts in political, economic, cultural and social areas. [The reunification] will completely smash the conspiracy of domestic and foreign enemies to overthrow socialist China through the utilization of Taiwan’s so-called democratic experiences.”

Another document Yuan obtained was the transcript of a June 2008 speech by Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. It was given at a highly secretive meeting of the Politburo of the Communist Party’s Central Committee.

According to Yuan, that meeting was primarily focused on plotting the strategy behind the Taiwan unification plan. The book says Wen Jiabao stated at the meeting that, “Economic integration is by nature, economic unification. Taiwan benefits from it economically, and we [the CCP] fulfill our political goal by doing it.”

And economic unification is just one of the strategies revealed in the new book.

Yuan says the communist regime also plans to:
• Make Taiwan economically dependent on the Mainland by occupying a large portion of Taiwan’s export and tourism markets;
• Erode Taiwan’s political platforms by corrupting the leaders of the ruling Kuomintang Party; and
• Marginalize the pro-democracy Democratic Progressive Party.

[Yuan Hongbing, Exiled Law Professor]:
“What is [the CCP] hoping to get in return for these economic concessions? They want Taiwan’s freedom in exchange. They want to deprive Taiwan’s freedom. This is the truth of the problem.”

– NTDTV

New Political Essay Arouses Attention Abroad, Authorship Suspected to be High-ranking Cadre

By Xin Fei, Epoch Times Staff Aug 12, 2009 –

A ten-thousand word political essay damning the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has attracted attention from Chinese dissidents recently, while websites carrying it are blocked inside the mainland

The essay, entitled The Ruling Party Must Establish Basic Political Ethics, is thought to be the summary of four conversations between an elder Chinese statesman and a young professor from the Party School of the Central Committee of the CCP. Its authorship is unknown, but many suspect the statesman featured in the essay to be Wan Li, former secretary of the Central Committee Secretariat and former Chairman of the National People’s Congress—the most important Party bureaucratic organ, and a rubber-stamp legislature respectively.

Though the essay includes sharp criticism of the CCP and has attracted much attention on the internet, Chinese authorities have so far failed to respond.

Zhang Weiguo, editor-in-chief of Hong Kong’s Trend magazine and the New Century Web site, told The Epoch Times that an “important person in Beijing” entrusted the New Century Web site to first publish the article on July 30. The identity of the elder statesman in the dialogue was not disclosed, however.

Zhang said he believes the author to be Wan Li, for a number of reasons. A source in Beijing he contacted said it was Wan Li, Wan has been one of the few high-level CCP veterans who dared to criticize the regime, and Chinese scholars inside the country that Zhang contacted also believed Wan Li to have written the letter.

This assessment is not universally supported, however. He Qinglian, a Chinese author and economist, indicated in an email response to questions from The Epoch Times that the letter could have been faked. “Some word usages [in the letter] aren’t what these kind of people use,” she wrote. “In a society where the peoples’ will is repressed, and where people are not given channels of expression, rumors are apt to multiply.”

Despite the claims and counter-claims of authorship, the article, which argues that the Party’s rule is “illegal and unethical,” and pins China’s apparent unrest over the years squarely on the communist Party, has triggered heated discussion on the internet. Tens of thousands of blog discussions have proliferated within the first week.

At the very beginning, the essay argues that “The Party has yet to register with the Ministry of Civil Affairs thus far. What’s behind this fact? It is that our country hasn’t had any ‘Political Party Law.’ It has lasted for 60 years, and this is still blank, there has been no change. Our country still has no modern political Party system.”

The essay also argues that there is no financial wall separating the Party treasury and the state treasury.

Central state organs “operate like underground illegal organs,” the essay says. “It is still the Party commanding the gun, the Party military has not been replaced with leadership by the state.”

The essay argues that “The Party comes before the country” rather than “The country comes before the Party.” For sixty years, the concept of “Party and state leaders” hasn’t changed, it says.

Wu Fan, President of the China Interim Government, a pro-democratic dissident group opposed to CCP rule, said that the discussion attempts to make the difference between China and the CCP clear. He believes the letter was written by Wan Li, and told The Epoch Times that “He [Wan] has devoted his whole life to the state and the Party,” adding that putting the country first is unprecedented among high-ranking CCP cadres.

“The past years of repeated setbacks we have suffered are all attributable to the Party’s internal struggles. I am grieved at this,” the letter reads. “For so many years we told the people that without the Communist Party there would be chaos. Their hope of stability becomes the ‘popular will’ for our Party’s sole grip on power. When can this cycle be broken?”

The speaker also calls for a process of reflection among Party elite: “Many people in our Party always get used to bragging that everything we are doing right now is correct. Then why don’t we commence a clear narrative of all that was not done right in the past? How can those things be made vague!?”

The contents of the essay advocate an alteration of Chinese society through reconstructing political ethics, according to Zhang, the Hong Kong newspaper editor. “No matter whether it is an individual, a political group, or a ruling party, they should be trustworthy and honest,” he says.

“Having established the country for 60 years, it is time to go back to the most basic question: What is the will of the country and the people?” the dialogue says. “The Soviet Union never figured it out, and in turn, the country and party was ruined after only 69 years.”

In the 1930s and 1940s the CCP publicly promised to build a democratic, free and independent country, according to the essay. But these promises were amended later. “My heart was severely shaken at that time … this was disrespecting history and essentially violating the ethics of politics … history will always give the truth back to the citizens … the citizens will have to find out,” the speaker says.

The full text of the near 10,000-word conversation piece has been circulated for over ten days on the web……. (More details from The Epochtimes)

Calls for parliamentary democracy in China

Mark Colvin, ABC News, Austrilia, 22 May , 2009-

MARK COLVIN: Exactly 20 years ago, Beijing’s central space, Tien An Men Square was still full of protesting students.

On the 19th May, the Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang had come to the square to plead with them to end their hunger strike.

The next day, military law was declared. On June the 4th the troops went in and what the West remembers as the Tien An Men massacre began.

By then, Zhao Ziyang, the only member of the ruling elite to talk to the students face to face, was under house arrest and had become a non-person.

This is how he remembers what the Chinese authorities prefer to call the June the 4th incident.

ZHAO ZIYANG (translated): On the night of June the 3rd while sitting in the courtyard with my family I heard intense gunfire. A tragedy to shock the world had not been averted and was happening after all.

I prepared the above-written material three years after the June the fourth tragedy. Many years have now passed since this tragedy. Of the activists involved in this incident, except for the few who escaped abroad, most were arrested, sentenced and repeatedly interrogated.

MARK COLVIN: The world was never meant to hear Zhao Ziyang’s voice again. But now, four years after his death comes the publication of his memoirs.

They were compiled from 30 cassette tapes, smuggled out of the country and now published as ‘Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang’.

Its publisher and co-translator is Bao Pu, son of a senior aide to Zhao.

He told me on the line from Hong Kong that Zhao Ziyang knew when he spoke to the students in the Square that his career was already over.

BAO PU: When he came out to talk to them he was already disposed from his position and knowing that after trying to prevent the final showdown of violence; and he actually failed to prevent that happening and that was you know his final moment appearing in public.

MARK COLVIN: And the reason why that was his final moment was because he had made the mistake of actually leaving the country in a crisis and that left his enemies in charge.

BAO PU: In this particular memoir he mentions many of his regrets and mistakes. Leaving the country at that moment is not one of them. At the moment that he left there was no reason for him, no obvious reason that he shouldn’t.

MARK COLVIN: But if he’d stayed, wouldn’t he have been able to keep the ear of Dung Xiaoping? Wouldn’t he have been able to have controlled things better?

BAO PU: Yes it’s possible but you have to say that it’s only speculation – maybe better – and we can’t be sure because history cannot be undone and repeat itself.

MARK COLVIN: So what were the forces ranged against him?

BAO PU: Tien An Men incidents to the Chinese leaders were merely a continuation of their struggle, their debate over economic reform. The new insight on this Tien An Men incident is that as soon as the student protest began, the Chinese leaders were already lined up on two sides.

On one side the favour harsh treatment, on the other are against the harsher treatment.

MARK COLVIN: In the background of all this was the fact that Zhao Ziyang didn’t just want economic reform he wanted political reform. Let’s just have a listen to what he says in the memoir about that.

ZHAO ZIYANG (translated): Of course it is possible that in the future a more advanced political system than the parliamentary democracy will emerge, but that is a matter for the future. At present, there is no other.

Based on this we can say that if a country wishes to modernise, not only should it implement a market economy, it must also adopt a parliamentary democracy as its political system……. (More  details from ABC News)

New Book Details China Spy Effort Ahead of Beijing Olympics

AFP, Feb. 25, 2008-

PARIS (AFP) — As athletes train for the summer Olympics in China, a new book claims that the country’s vast spy network is gearing up for a different challenge – keeping an eye on journalists and potential troublemakers.

French writer Roger Faligot, author of some 40 intelligence-related books, has penned ‘The Chinese Secret Services from Mao to the Olympic Games’, due out February 29.

His findings claim that special teams are being formed at the country’s embassies abroad “to identify sports journalists … and to define if they have an ‘antagonistic’ or ‘friendly’ attitude in regards to China.”

Potential foreign spies who may seek to enter China by posing as journalists or visitors will be subject to special surveillance.

The same goes for human rights activists who could use the event to demonstrate in favour of causes such as Tibet, where China has violently crushed protests against its rule, it says.

That’s not to mention the long list of other issues preoccupying Chinese authorities, including the possibility of an Al-Qaeda attack and protests from the Falun Gong spiritual movement. China has outlawed Falun Gong, which combines meditation with Buddhist-inspired teachings.

“The watchword for the Chinese is ‘no problems at the Olympics,'” Faligot says.

Faligot, who is fluent in Mandarin, says he spoke with numerous Chinese officials.

According to him, two million Chinese work directly or indirectly for the intelligence services through the state security agency.

In a chapter titled ‘China: Gold Medal for Espionage’, the author says the director of the group coordinating Olympic security, Qiang Wei, has a 1.3-billion-dollar (885-million-euro) budget.

An Olympic security command centre has been created “in order to assure a response to all risks in real time”.

Olympic organisers admitted last year to budget overruns caused by extra expenditure on security at the Games, the biggest international event ever staged in communist China.

Last September, China’s then-police chief Zhou Yongkang said that “terrorist” and “extremist” groups posed the biggest threat to the success of the Olympics.

He did not elaborate, but China has previously accused some members of the ethnic Muslim Uighur community in the nation’s far western region of Xinjiang of terror-related activities.

In the year leading up to the August 8-24 Games, the Chinese army will have organised 25 exercises on how to respond to crises, including a chemical attack on the subway.

The teams being formed in foreign embassies will work in conjunction with “different Chinese intelligence services under diplomatic cover”.

Those intelligence services will include the secretive 610 office, set up in 1999 to target the Falun Gong movement and which operates worldwide.

But the intelligence services won’t only be deployed during the Olympics to keep an eye out, Faligot says. They’ll also be recruiting among the two million visitors expected for the event.

– Original report from AFP: New book details Chinese spy effort ahead of Olympics

Video: Part 9, Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party

This is the 9th of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, by The Epoch Times, Dec 09, 2004, Video by NTDTV–

On the Unscrupulous Nature of the Chinese Communist Party

Foreword

The communist movement, which has made a big fanfare for over a century, has brought mankind only war, poverty, brutality, and dictatorship. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European communist parties, this disastrous and outrageous drama finally entered its last stage by the end of the last century. No one, from the ordinary citizens to the General Secretary of the Communist Party, believes in the myth of communism anymore.

The communist regime came into being due to neither “divine mandate” [1] nor democratic election. Today, with its ideology destroyed, the legitimacy of its reign is facing an unprecedented challenge.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is unwilling to leave the historical stage in accordance with the currents of history. Instead, it is using the ruthless methods developed during decades of political campaigns to renew its crazed struggle for legitimacy and to revive its dead mandate.

The CCP’s policies of reform and opening up disguise a desperate intention to maintain its group interest and totalitarian rule. Despite tight restrictions, the economic achievements earned by the hard work of the Chinese people in the past 20 years did not persuade the CCP to put down its butcher knife. Instead, the CCP stole these achievements and used them to validate its rule, making its consistently unprincipled behavior more deceptive and misleading. What is most alarming is that the CCP is going all out to destroy the moral foundation of the entire nation, attempting to turn every Chinese citizen, to various degrees, into a schemer in order to create an environment favorable for the CCP to “advance over time.”

In the historical moment today, it is especially important for us to understand clearly why the CCP acts like a band of scoundrels and to expose its villainous nature, so that the Chinese nation can achieve lasting stability and peace, enter an era free of the CCP as soon as possible, and construct a future of renewed national splendor……. (more details from Epoch Times Commentaries on the Communist Party – Part 9)

Related:
– Video: Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party
– Official website of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party

Over Half of All Chinese Have Read Nine Commentaries, Says Rights Activist

By Wang Renjun, The Epoch Times, Jan 04, 2008-

TAIPEI− A Chinese human rights activist, Mr. Wu Yalin, who is currently seeking political asylum in Taiwan, revealed that over half of Chinese people have read the book Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party (The Nine Commentaries).

Wu is the latest person after Hao Fengjun ¹ and Jia Jia ² to publicly confirm the tremendous and wide spread wave of Chinese people withdrawing from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Communist Youth League (CYL) and the Communist Young Pioneer (CYP).

Wu obtained a copy of the Nine Commentaries in October 2007. Immediately after receiving the book, he began to read it. He had asked for three copies. Besides leaving a copy for himself, he planned to spread the other two copies amongst his friends.

He finished reading the book in two days. The chapter about 30 million people dying from starvation resonated very strongly in his mind. He commented, “This kind of content is blocked in China. Although I was only two years old at the time, the elderly people in my hometown all pointed out that this famine which was responsible for the deaths of 30 million people was indeed caused by humans, and not natural disasters as reported in the Communist Party’s propaganda.”

Half of all Chinese Have Read The Nine Commentaries

Wu discovered that all of the information found within The  Nine Commentaries is historical fact. Thus he began spreading his three copies of the book amongst his friends one by one, in almost every province throughout China.

In the process of spreading The Nine Commentaries, he discovered that, “Over half of my friends have read this book. Almost everyone has heard about it, some even read it as early as two years ago.”

Wu continued, “As far as I know, The Nine Commentaries are widely spread not only amongst the masses of average people, but also among many communist party members. According to what I know, more than half of the people in China have read it. In addition, the people who read it all comment that, ‘This is true.'”

Wu also pointed out that, “The Nine Commentaries are openly spread overseas, but in mainland China, it is very precious as it is very difficult to obtain a copy.”

Spreading The Nine Commentaries is Illegal in China

On November 11, 2007, Wu received a covert message from a friend informing him that the members of the Bazhong Municipal Party Committee of Sichuan province were secretly planning to sentence Wu to three years in prison for spreading The  Nine Commentaries. Wu was to be brought up on three different charges, including “spreading The Nine Commentaries,” “ganging up with an anti-China force” and “disturbing Beijing’s social order.”

Once Wu learned that he was facing danger, he determined that the jurisdiction of the CCP doesn’t need to go through any court ruling; a sentence from the county Party Committee would be sufficient. Therefore, they could easily fabricate any charges they wanted to; a groundless court decision could thus put an individual into a labor camp for three years.

Wu Yalin, who had previously spent nine years in prison, understood this very well. Without telling any of his friends, he quickly and silently went to Shenzhen. There he joined a travel group heading for Thailand. He finally arrived in Taiwan on December 27, 2007, seeking political asylum.

Many People Secretly Withdraw from the Communist Party

Wu revealed the reason he was able to escape from China is that he had, in fact, prepared his passport a year ago. After having suffered extended persecution at the hands of the Chinese communist regime, he made sure that he was prepared to escape from China at any time.

Immediately after reaching Taiwan on December 28, Wu was informed by his friend, that Sichuan Provincial authority had issued an order for his arrest as a criminal at large. Should Wu return to China, he would be sentenced to three years in a labor camp on unsubstantiated charges.

In recent years many people have doubted the authenticity of the number of people withdrawing from the party. Wu expressed, “In fact, many withdraw from the party under an alias. Because of the Chinese communist regime’s dangerously high pressure policies, many people dare not openly admit that they have withdrawn from the party.”

He also added, “Many people joined the party not out of support for the ideals of the Communist Party, instead, they joined for personal benefits, such as obtaining power and money. I dare to say, if the Communist Party were in a democratic country, then it wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Nobody would support it because it is indeed far too bad and has committed all manner of evil deeds.”

Average People Haven’t Gained any True Benefits

In the past year, the Chinese communist regime has claimed a so-called “peaceful rise”. Although many think that “the Chinese communist party is getting better” and that “the regime needs to be given more time to make improvements,” Wu doesn’t agree.

He pointed out that “It has been proven time and again that after several decades of reform in China, the economy has improved a lot, however, the people who truly gain the benefits consist of a small percentage of individuals within the party. Many average people haven’t truly gained any benefits. The value of the Chinese yuan has gone up in relation to the U.S. dollar, however, the CCP has used such money to purchase weapons used for threatening and targeting Taiwan, even America. Don’t hold onto false hope that the CCP will be peaceful. We shall cast off this regime as soon as possible.”

[1] Hao Fengjun, former police officer of the 610 Office of the Tianjin Bureau of State Security, sought political asylum in Australia after he fled China in February, 2005. He left his work because he no longer wanted to be involved in the persecution of Falun Gong and other religious groups. Encouraged by the recent events related to the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party and Chen Yonglin, Hao decided to step forward and tell the public the truth.

[2] Jia Jia, former General Secretary of the Shanxi Provincial Association of Scientists and Technology Experts. He left his tourist group in Taiwan on October 30, 2006 and publicly announced his separation from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)

– Original report from the Epochtimes

Video: Part 8, Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party

This is the 8th of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, by The Epoch Times, Dec 09, 2004, Video by NTDTV–

On How the Chinese Communist Party Is an Evil Cult

Foreword

The collapse of the socialist bloc headed by the Soviet Union in the early 1990s marked the failure of communism after almost a century. However, the CCP unexpectedly survived and still controls China, a nation with one fifth of the world’s population. An unavoidable question arises: Is the CCP today still truly communist?

No one in today’s China, including Party members, believes in communism. After fifty years of socialism, the CCP has now adopted private ownership and even has a stock market. It seeks foreign investment to establish new ventures, while exploiting workers and peasants as much as it can. This is completely opposite to the ideals of communism. Despite compromising with capitalism, the CCP maintains autocratic control of the people of China. The Constitution, as revised in 2004, still rigidly states “Chinese people of various ethnicities will continue adhering to the people’s democratic dictatorship and socialist path under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong’s ideology, Deng Xiaoping’s theory and the important thought of the ‘Three Represents’…”

“The leopard has died, but its skin is still left” [1]. Today’s CCP only has “its skin” left. The CCP inherited this skin and uses it to maintain its rule over China.

What is the nature of the skin inherited by the CCP, i.e., the very organization of the CCP?

******************I. The Cultish Traits of the CCP

The Communist Party is essentially an evil cult that harms mankind.

Although the Communist Party has never called itself a religion, it matches every single trait of a religion (Table 1). At the beginning of its establishment, it regarded Marxism as the absolute truth in the world. It piously worshipped Marx as its spiritual God, and exhorted people to engage in a life-long struggle for the goal of building a “communist heaven on earth.”

Table 1. Religious Traits of the CCP.

	The Basic Forms of a Religion	The Corresponding Forms of the CCP
1	Church or platform (podium)	All levels of the Party committee; the platform ranges from Party meetings to all media controlled by the CCP
2	Doctrines	Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong’s Ideology, Deng Xiaoping’s Theory, Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents”, and Party Constitution
3	Initiation rites	Ceremony in which oaths are taken to be loyal to the CCP forever
4	Commitment to one religion	A member may only believe in the communist party
5	Priests	Party Secretaries and staff in charge of party affairs on all levels
6	Worshiping God	Slandering all Gods, and then establishing itself as an unnamed “God”
7	Death is called “ascending to heaven or descending to hell”	Death is called “going to see Marx”
8	Scriptures	The theory and writings of the Communist Party leaders
9	Preaching	All sorts of meetings; leaders’ speeches
10	Chanting scriptures; study or cross-examination of scriptures	Political studies; routine group meetings or activities for the Party members
11	Hymn (religious songs)	Songs to eulogize the Party
12	Donations	Compulsory membership fees; mandatory allocation of governmental budget, which is money from people’s sweat and blood, for the Party’s use
13	Disciplinary punishment	Party disciplines ranging from “house arrest and investigation” and “expulsion from the Party” to deadly tortures and even punishments of relatives and friends

The Communist Party is significantly different from any righteous religion. All orthodox religions believe in God and benevolence, and have as their purpose instructing humanity about morality and saving souls. The Communist Party does not believe in God and opposes traditional morality.

What the Communist Party has done proves itself to be an evil cult. The Communist Party’s doctrines are based upon class struggle, violent revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat and have resulted in the so-called “communist revolution” full of blood and violence. The red terror under communism has lasted for about a century, bringing disasters to dozens of countries in the world and costing tens of millions of lives. The communist belief, one that created a hell on earth, is nothing but the vilest cult in the world……. ( more details from On How the Chinese Communist Party Is an Evil Cult— Part 8, Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party)

Related:
– Video: Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party
– Official website of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party

Video: Part 7, Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party

This is the 7th of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, by The Epoch Times, Dec 09, 2004, Video by NTDTV–

On the Chinese Communist Party’s History of Killing

Foreword

The 55-year history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is written with blood and lies. The stories behind this bloody history are both extremely tragic and rarely known. Under the rule of the CCP, 60 to 80 million innocent Chinese people have been killed, leaving their broken families behind. Many people wonder why the CCP kills. While the CCP continues its brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and recently suppressed protesting crowds in Hanyuan with gunshots, people wonder whether they will ever see the day when the CCP will learn to speak with words rather than guns.

Mao Zedong summarized the purpose of the Cultural Revolution, “…after the chaos the world reaches peace, but in 7 or 8 years, the chaos needs to happen again.” [1] In other words, there should be a political revolution every 7 or 8 years and a crowd of people needs to be killed every 7 or 8 years.

A supporting ideology and practical requirements lie behind the CCP’s slaughters.

Ideologically, the CCP believes in the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and “continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Therefore, after the CCP took over China, it killed the landowners to resolve problems with production relationships in rural areas. It killed the capitalists to reach the goal of commercial and industrial reform and solve the production relationships in the cities. After these two classes were eliminated, the problems related to the economic base were basically solved. Similarly, solving the problems related to the superstructure [2] also called for slaughter. The suppressions of the Hu Feng Anti-Party Group [3] and the Anti-Rightists Movement eliminated the intellectuals. Killing the Christians, Taoists, Buddhists and popular folk groups solved the problem of religions. Mass murders during the Cultural Revolution established, culturally and politically, the CCP’s absolute leadership. The Tiananmen Square massacre was used to prevent political crisis and squelch democratic demands. The persecution of Falun Gong is meant to resolve the issues of belief and traditional healing. These actions were all necessary for the CCP to strengthen its power and maintain its rule in the face of continual financial crisis (prices for consumer goods skyrocketed after the CCP took power and China’s economy almost collapsed after the Cultural Revolution), political crisis (some people not following the Party’s orders or some others wanting to share political rights with the Party) and crisis of belief (the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, political changes in Eastern Europe, and the Falun Gong issue). Except for the Falun Gong issue, almost all the foregoing political movements were utilized to revive the evil specter of the CCP and incite its desire for revolution. The CCP also used these political movements to test CCP members, eliminating those who did not meet the Party’s requirements.

Killing is also necessary for practical reasons. The Communist Party began as a group of thugs and scoundrels who killed to obtain power. Once this precedent was set, there was no going back. Constant terror was needed to intimidate people and force them to accept, out of fear, the absolute rule of the CCP.

On the surface, it may appear that the CCP was “forced to kill,” and that various incidents just happened to irritate the CCP evil specter and accidentally trigger CCP’s killing mechanism. In truth, these incidents serve to disguise the Party’s need to kill, and periodical killing is required by the CCP. Without these painful lessons, people might begin to think the CCP was improving and start to demand democracy, just as those idealistic students in the 1989 democratic movement did. Recurring slaughter every 7 or 8 years serves to refresh people’s memory of terror and can warn the younger generation—whoever works against the CCP, wants to challenge the CCP’s absolute leadership, or attempts to tell the truth regarding China’s history, will get a taste of the “iron fist of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Killing has become one of the most essential ways for the CCP to maintain power. With the escalation of its bloody debts, laying down its butcher knife would encourage people to take vengeance for the CCP’s criminal acts. Therefore, the CCP not only needed to conduct copious and thorough killing, but the slaughter also had to be done in a most brutal fashion to effectively intimidate the populace, especially early on when the CCP was establishing its rule.

Since the purpose of the killing was to instill the greatest terror, the CCP selected targets for destruction arbitrarily and irrationally. In every political movement, the CCP used the strategy of genocide. Take the “suppression of reactionaries” as an example. The CCP did not really suppress the reactionary “behaviors” but the “people” whom they called the reactionaries. If one had been enlisted and served a few days in the Nationalist (Kuomintang, KMT) army but did absolutely nothing political after the CCP gained power, this person would still be killed because of his “reactionary history.” In the process of land reform, in order to remove the “root of the problem,” the CCP often killed a landowner’s entire family.

Since 1949, the CCP has persecuted more than half the people in China. An estimated 60 million to 80 million people died from unnatural causes. This number exceeds the total number of deaths in both World Wars combined.

As with other communist countries, the wanton killing done by the CCP also includes brutal slayings of its own members in order to remove dissidents who value a sense of humanity over the Party nature. The CCP’s rule of terror falls equally on the populace and its members in an attempt to maintain an “invincible fortress.”

In a normal society, people show care and love for one another, hold life in awe and veneration and give thanks to God. In the East, people say, “Do not impose on others what you would not want done to yourself [4].” In the West, people say, “Love thy neighbor as thyself [5].” Conversely, the CCP holds that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles [6].” In order to keep alive the “struggles” within society, hatred must be generated. Not only does the CCP take lives, it encourages people to kill each other. It strives to desensitize people towards others’ suffering by surrounding them with constant killing. It wants them to become numb from frequent exposure to inhumane brutality, and develop the mentality that “the best you can hope for is to avoid being persecuted.” All these lessons taught by brutal suppression enable the CCP to maintain its rule.

In addition to the destruction of countless lives, the CCP also destroyed the soul of the Chinese people. A great many people have become conditioned to react to the CCP’s threats by entirely surrendering their reason and their principles. In a sense, these people’s souls have died—something more frightening than physical death……. ( more details from On the Chinese Communist Party’s History of Killing — Part 7, Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party)

Related:
– Video: Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party
– Official website of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party

Video: Part 6, Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party

This is the 6th of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, by The Epoch Times, Dec 09, 2004, Video by NTDTV–

On How the Chinese Communist Party Destroyed Traditional Culture

Foreword

Culture is the soul of a nation. This spiritual factor is as important to mankind as physical factors such as race and land.

Cultural developments define the history of a nation’s civilization. The complete destruction of a national culture leads to the end of the nation. Ancient nations who had created glorious civilizations were considered to have vanished when their cultures disappeared, even though people of their races may have survived.

China is the only country in the world whose ancient civilization has been passed down continuously for over 5,000 years. Destruction of its traditional culture is an unforgivable crime.

The Chinese culture, believed to be passed down by God, started with such myths as Pangu’s creation of heaven and the earth [1], Nüwa’s creation of humanity [2], Shennong’s identification of hundreds of medicinal herbs [3], and Cangjie’s invention of Chinese characters [4].

“Man follows the earth, the earth follows heaven, heaven follows the Tao, and the Tao follows what is natural.” [5] The Taoist wisdom of unity of heaven and humanity has coursed through the veins of Chinese culture.

“Great learning promotes the cultivation of virtue.”[6] Confucius opened a school to teach students more than 2,000 years ago and imparted to society the Confucian ideals represented by the five cardinal virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faithfulness.

In the first century, Shakyamuni’s Buddhism traveled east to China with its emphasis on compassion and salvation for all beings. The Chinese culture became more wide-ranging and profound.

Thereafter, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism became complementary beliefs in Chinese society, bringing the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) to the peak of its glory and prosperity, as is known to all under heaven.

Although the Chinese nation has experienced invasion and attack many times in history, the Chinese culture has shown great endurance and stamina, and its essence has been continuously passed down.

The unity of heaven and humanity represents our ancestors’ cosmology. It is common sense that kindness will be rewarded and evil will be punished. It is an elementary virtue not to do to others what one does not want done to oneself. Loyalty, filial piety, dignity, and justice have set the social standards, and Confucius’ five cardinal virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faithfulness have laid the foundation for social and personal morality.

With these principles, the Chinese culture embodied honesty, kindness, harmony, and tolerance. Common Chinese people’s death memorials show reverence to “heaven, earth, monarch, parents and teacher.” This is a cultural expression of the deep-rooted Chinese traditions, which include worship of god (heaven and earth), loyalty to the country (monarch), values of family (parents), and respect for teachers.

The traditional Chinese culture sought harmony between man and the universe, and emphasized an individual’s ethics and morality. It was based on the faiths of the cultivation practices of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, and provided the Chinese people with tolerance, social progress, a safeguard for human morality, and righteous belief.

Unlike law, which prescribes hard rules, culture works as a soft constraint. The law enforces punishment after a crime has been committed, while culture, by nurturing morality, prevents crimes from happening in the first place. A society’s morality is often embodied in its culture.

In Chinese history, traditional culture reached its peak during the prosperous Tang Dynasty, coinciding with the height of the Chinese nation’s power. Science was also advanced and enjoyed a unique reputation among all nations. Scholars from Europe, the Middle East, and Japan came to study in Chang’an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty. Countries bordering China took China as their suzerain state. “Tens of thousands of countries came to pay tribute to China, even though they might have to be translated multiple times and clear successive customs.” [7]

After the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC), China was often occupied by minority groups. This happened during the Sui (581-618AD), Tang (618-907AD), Yuan (1271-1361AD) and Qing (1644-1911AD) dynasties and in some other times when ethnic minorities established their own regimes. Nevertheless, almost all these ethnic groups were assimilated to the Chinese ways. This shows the great integrative power of traditional Chinese culture. As Confucius said, “(Thus) if the people from afar are not compliant, bring them around by cultivating (our) culture and virtue.” [8]

Since attaining power in 1949, the CCP has devoted the nation’s resources to destroying China’s traditional culture. This ill intention did not come from the CCP’s zeal for industrialization, nor from simple foolishness in worshipping Western civilization. Rather, it came from the CCP’s inherent ideological opposition to traditional Chinese culture. Thus, the CCP’s destruction of Chinese culture has been planned, well organized, and systematic, supported by the state’s use of violence. Since its establishment, the CCP has never stopped “revolutionizing” Chinese culture in the attempt to destroy its spirit completely.

Even more despicable than the CCP’s destruction of traditional culture is its intentional misuse and underhanded modification of traditional culture. The CCP has highlighted the vile parts from China’s history, things that occurred whenever people diverged from traditional values, such as internal strife for power within the royal family, the use of tactics and conspiracy, and the exercise of dictatorship and despotism.

It has used these historical examples to help create the CCP’s own set of moral standards, ways of thinking, and system of discourse. In doing so, the CCP has given the false impression that the “Party culture” is actually a continuation of traditional Chinese culture. The CCP has even taken advantage of the aversion some people have for the “Party culture” to incite further abandonment of the authentic Chinese tradition.

The CCP’s destruction of traditional culture has brought disastrous consequences to China. Not only have people lost their moral bearings, they have also been forcibly indoctrinated with the CCP’s evil theories.

******************I. Why Did the CCP Want to Sabotage Traditional Culture?

The Long Tradition of Chinese Culture—Based on Faith and Venerating Virtue

The authentic culture of the Chinese nation started about 5,000 years ago with the legendary Emperor Huang, who is deemed to be the earliest ancestor of the Chinese civilization. In fact, Emperor Huang was also credited with founding Taoism—which was also called the Huang-Lao (Lao Zi) school of thought. The profound influence of Taoism on Confucianism can be seen in such Confucian sayings as “Aspire to the Tao, align with virtue, abide by benevolence, and immerse yourself in the arts” and “If one hears the Tao in the morning, one can die without regret in the evening.” [9] The Book of Changes (I Ching), a record of heaven and earth, yin and yang, cosmic changes, social rise and decline, and the laws of human life, was regarded as “Number one among all Chinese classics” by Confucians. The prophetic power of the book has far surpassed what modern science can conceive. In addition to Taoism and Confucianism, Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism, has had a subtle yet profound influence on Chinese intellectuals.

Confucianism is the part of the traditional Chinese culture that focused on “entering the mundane world.” It emphasized family-based ethics, in which filial piety played an extremely important role, teaching that “all kindness starts with filial piety.” Confucius advocated “benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faithfulness,” but also said, “Aren’t filial piety and brotherly love the roots of benevolence?”

Family-based ethics can be naturally extended to guide social morality. Filial piety can be extended to subordinates’ loyalty to the monarch. It is said that, “It is seldom that a person with filial piety and brotherly love will be inclined to offend those above.”[10] Brotherly love is the relationship among brothers, and can be further extended to righteousness and justice among friends. Confucians teach that in a family, a father should be kind, a son filial, an older brother friendly, and a younger brother respectful. Here, fatherly kindness can be further extended to benevolence of the monarch toward his subordinates. As long as the traditions of a family can be maintained, social morality can naturally be sustained. “Cultivate oneself, regulate one’s family, rightly govern one’s state and make the whole kingdom tranquil and happy.” [11]

Buddhism and Taoism are the parts of Chinese culture that focused on “leaving the mundane world.” The influence of Buddhism and Taoism can be found to penetrate all aspects of ordinary people’s lives. Practices that are deeply rooted in Taoism include Chinese medicine, qigong, geomancy (Feng Shui), and divination. These practices, as well as the Buddhist conceptions of a heavenly kingdom and hell, the karmic reward of good and the retribution of evil, have, together with Confucian ethics, formed the core of traditional Chinese culture.

The beliefs of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism offered the Chinese people a very stable moral system, unchangeable “so long as heaven remains.” [12] This ethical system offered the basis for sustainability, peace, and harmony in society.

Morality belongs to the spiritual realm; thus, it is often conceptual. Culture expresses such an abstract moral system in language that can be commonly understood.

Take the “Four Chinese Classics,” the four most renowned novels in Chinese culture, as examples. The Journey to the West [13] is a mythical tale. A Dream of Red Mansions [14] starts with a dialog between a spirited stone and the Deity of Infinite Space and the Tao of Boundless Time at the Baseless Cliff of the Great Waste Mountain—this dialog provides clues for the human drama that unfolds in the novel. Outlaws of the Marsh [15] opens with a tale of how premier Hong, in charge of military affairs, accidentally set free 108 demons. This legend explains the origin of the “108 outlaw militants of prowess.” Three Kingdoms [16] begins with a heavenly warning of a disaster, and ends with the inescapable conclusion of God’s will: “The world’s affairs rush on like an endless stream; a heaven-told fate, infinite in reach, dooms all.” Other well-known stories, such as The Romance of the Eastern Zhou [17] and The Complete Story of Yue Fei [18], all begin with similar legends.

These novelists’ use of myths was not a coincidence, but a reflection of a basic philosophy of Chinese intellectuals toward nature and humanity. These novels have had a profound influence on the Chinese mind. When speaking of “righteousness,” people think of Guan Yu (160-219 AD) of the Three Kingdoms rather than the concept itself—how his righteousness to his friends transcended the clouds and reached heaven; how his unmovable loyalty to his superior and sworn-brother Liu Bei gained him respect even from his enemies; how his bravery in battle prevailed in the most dire of situations, his final defeat in a battle near the Town of Mai; and, finally, his conference as a deity with his son. When speaking of “loyalty,” Chinese people naturally think of Yue Fei (1103-1141 AD), a Song Dynasty general who served his country with unreserved integrity and loyalty, and Zhuge Liang (181-234 AD), prime minister of the Shu State during the Three Kingdoms period, who “gave his all until his heart stopped beating.”

Traditional Chinese culture’s eulogy of loyalty and righteousness has been fully elaborated in these authors’ colorful stories. The abstract moral principles they espouse have been made specific and embodied in cultural expressions.

Taoism emphasizes truthfulness. Buddhism emphasizes compassion, and Confucianism values loyalty, tolerance, benevolence and righteousness. “While their forms differ, their purposes are the same…they all inspire people to return to kindness.” [19] These are the most valuable aspects of traditional Chinese culture based upon the beliefs in Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.

Traditional Chinese culture is filled with concepts and principles such as heaven, the Tao, God, Buddha, fate, predestination, benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, faithfulness, honesty, shame, loyalty, filial piety, dignity, and so on. Many Chinese may be illiterate, but they are still familiar with traditional plays and operas. These cultural forms have been important ways for ordinary people to learn traditional morals. Therefore, the CCP’s destruction of traditional Chinese culture is a direct attack against Chinese morality and undermines the basis for peace and harmony in society.

The Evil Communist Theory Opposes Traditional Culture

The “philosophy” of the Communist Party completely contradicts the authentic traditional Chinese culture. Traditional culture respects the mandate of heaven, as Confucius once said, “Life and death are predestined, and wealth and rank are determined by heaven.” [20] Both Buddhism and Taoism are forms of theism, and believe in the reincarnation cycle of life and death, and the karmic causality of good and evil. The Communist Party, on the contrary, not only believes in atheism, but also runs wild in defying the Tao and assaulting heavenly principles. Confucianism values family, but the Communist Manifesto clearly promulgates abolition of the family. Traditional culture differentiates the Chinese from the foreign, but the Communist Manifesto advocates the end of nationality. Confucian culture promotes kindness to others, but the Communist Party encourages class struggle. Confucians encourage loyalty to the monarch and love for the nation. The Communist Manifesto promotes the elimination of nations.

To gain and maintain power in China, the Communist Party first had to plant its immoral thoughts on Chinese soil. Mao Zedong claimed, “If we want to overthrow an authority, we must first make propaganda, and do work in the area of ideology.”[21] The CCP realized that the violent communist theory, which is sustained with arms, is the refuse of Western thoughts and could not stand up to China’s profound 5,000-year cultural history. “In for a penny, in for a pound.” The CCP then completely destroyed traditional Chinese culture, so that Marxism and Leninism could take China’s political stage.

Traditional Culture Is an Obstacle to the CCP’s Dictatorship

( …… more details from  the Nine Commentaries)

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This is the 5th of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, by The Epoch Times, Dec 09, 2004, Video by NTDTV–

On the Collusion of Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Communist Party to Persecute Falun Gong

Foreword

Ms. Zhang Fuzhen, about 38 years old, was an employee of Xianhe Park, Pingdu City, Shandong Province, China. She went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in November 2000 and was later abducted by the authorities. According to people with knowledge of the case, the police tortured and humiliated Zhang Fuzhen, stripping her naked and shaving her whole head. They tied her to a bed with her four limbs stretched out, and she therefore was forced to relieve herself on the bed. Later, the police gave her an injection of an unknown poisonous drug. After the injection, Zhang was in so much pain that she nearly went insane. She struggled in great pain on the bed until she died. The whole process was witnessed by the local officials of the 610 Office (from a July 23, 2004 report on the Clearwisdom website) [1].

Ms. Yang Lirong, 34, was from Beimen Street, Dingzhou City, Baoding Prefecture, Hebei Province. Her family was often harassed and intimidated by the police because she practiced Falun Gong. On February 8, 2002, after a nighttime police raid, Ms. Yang’s husband, a driver in the Bureau of Standards & Meteorology, was traumatized and afraid of losing his job. He could not withstand the tremendous pressure the authorities exerted on him. Early the next morning, taking advantage of the time when their elderly parents had stepped out of the house, he strangled his wife. Yang Lirong died tragically, leaving behind a 10-year-old son. Soon afterwards, her husband reported the incident to the authorities, and the police hurried to the scene to conduct an autopsy on Ms. Yang’s body, which was still warm. They removed many organs from her body while the organs were still radiating heat and blood gushed out. A Dingzhou Public Security Bureau staff said, “This is no autopsy; it is vivisection!” (from a September 25, 2004 report on the Clearwisdom website) [2]

In the Wanjia Forced Labor Camp in Heilongjiang Province, a woman who was about 7 months pregnant was hung up from a beam. Both of her hands were tied with a coarse rope that was hung over a pulley attached to the beam. The stool that supported her was removed, and she was suspended in the air. The beam was 3 to 4 meters (10 to 12 feet) above the ground. The rope went through the pulley, and one end of the rope was held by the prison guards. When the guards pulled on the rope, she would be suspended in the air; as soon as the police let go of the rope, she would quickly fall to the ground. This pregnant woman suffered painful torture like this until she had a miscarriage. Even crueler was that her husband was forced to watch his wife endure the torture (from a November 15, 2004 report on the Minghui website, an interview with Ms. Wang Yuzhi who was tortured for over 100 days in the Wanjia Forced Labor Camp). [3]

These startling tragedies occurred in modern-day China. They happened to Falun Gong practitioners, who are being brutally persecuted, and they are just a few of the countless torture cases that have taken place over the past five years of continuous persecution.

Since China began economic reforms in the late 1970s, the CCP has endeavored to build a positive, liberal image in the international community. However, the persecution of Falun Gong over the last five years, which has been bloody, irrational, widespread, vehement and brutal, has enabled the international community to once again witness the true face of the CCP and the biggest disgrace on the CCP’s human rights record. The general public in China, under the delusion that the CCP has been improving and progressing, has become used to blaming the low morality of the police for the atrocities committed by the Chinese legal system and law enforcement. However, the brutal, systematic persecution of Falun Gong is ubiquitous throughout every level of Chinese society and has completely burst the illusion of improved human rights. Many people are now pondering how such a bloody and outrageous persecution could have happened in China. The social order was stabilized after the chaos of the Great Cultural Revolution 20 years ago. Why has China entered another similar cycle of nightmarish events? Why is Falun Gong, which upholds the principles of “Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance” and has been promulgated in over 60 countries worldwide, being persecuted only in China, not anywhere else in the world? In this persecution, what is the relationship between Jiang Zemin and the CCP?

Jiang Zemin lacks both ability and moral integrity. Without a fine-tuned machine of violence like the CCP, which is based on slaughters and lies, he would never have been capable of launching this genocide, a genocide that is widespread throughout China and that even penetrates overseas. Similarly, the CCP would not have easily gone against the current of the historic trends and the environment created by the CCP’s recent economic reforms and attempts to connect to the world; only a self-willed dictator like Jiang Zemin who was determined to have his way could make this happen. The collusion and resonance between Jiang Zemin and the evil specter of the CCP have amplified the atrocities of the persecution to an unprecedented level. It is similar to how the resonance between the sound of a mountain climber’s equipment on accumulated snow can cause an avalanche and bring about disastrous consequences. …… (more details of the 5th Commentary on the Chinese Communist Party)

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This is the fourth of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, by The Epoch Times, Dec 09, 2004-

On How the Communist Party Is an Anti-Universe Force

Foreword

Chinese people value greatly the “Tao,” or the Way. In ancient times a brutal emperor would be called “a decadent ruler who lacks the Tao.” Any behavior not conforming to the standard of morality, which, in Chinese, is denoted by the two characters Dao De, meaning “Tao” and “Virtue” respectively, was said “not to follow the principle of Tao.” Even revolting farmers put out banners proclaiming “achieve the Way on behalf of heaven.” Lao Zi [1] said, “There is something mysterious and whole, which existed before heaven and earth. Silent, formless, complete, and never changing. Living eternally everywhere in perfection, it is the mother of all things. I do not know its name; I call it the Way.” This suggests that the world is formed from “Tao.”

In the last hundred years, the sudden invasion by the communist specter has created a force against nature and humanity, causing limitless agony and tragedy. It has also pushed civilization to the brink of destruction. Having committed all sorts of atrocities that violate the Tao and oppose heaven and the earth, it has become an extremely malevolent force against the universe.

“Man follows the earth, the earth follows heaven, heaven follows the Tao, and the Tao follows what is natural.” [2] In ancient China people believed in complying with, harmonizing and co-existing with heaven. Mankind integrates with heaven and the earth, and exists in mutual dependence with them. The Tao of the universe does not change. The universe runs according to the Tao in an orderly manner. The earth follows the changes of heaven, therefore it has four distinct seasons. By respecting heaven and the earth, mankind enjoys a harmonious life of gratitude and blessings. This is reflected in the expression “heaven’s favorable timing, earth’s advantageous terrain, and harmony among the people.” [3] According to Chinese thought, astronomy, geography, the calendar system, medicine, literature, and even social structures all follow this understanding.

But the Communist Party promotes “humans over nature” and a “philosophy of struggle” in defiance of heaven, the earth, and nature. Mao Zedong said, “battling with heaven is endless joy, fighting with the earth is endless joy, and struggling with humanity is endless joy.”

Perhaps the Communist Party did acquire real joy from these struggles, but the people have paid tremendously painful costs. ( …… more details from the fourth of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party )

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This is the third of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, by The Epoch Times, Dec 09, 2004-

On the Tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party

Foreword

When speaking about tyranny, most Chinese people are reminded of Qin Shi Huang (259-210 B.C.), the first Emperor of the Qin Dynasty, whose oppressive court burnt philosophical books and buried Confucian scholars alive.

Qin Shi Huang’s harsh treatment of his people came from his policy of “supporting his rule with all of the resources under heaven.” [1] This policy had four main aspects: excessively heavy taxation; wasting human labor for projects to glorify himself; brutal torture under harsh laws and punishing even the offenders’ family members and neighbors; and controlling people’s minds by blocking all avenues of free thinking and expression through burning books and even burying scholars alive.

Under the rule of Qin Shi Huang, China had a population of about 10 million; Qin’s court drafted over 2 million to perform forced labor. Qin Shi Huang brought his harsh laws into the intellectual realm, prohibiting freedom of thought on a massive scale.

During his rule, thousands of Confucian scholars and officials who criticized the government were killed.

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.

Mao Zedong, the first CCP leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), put it bluntly by saying, “What can Emperor Qin Shihuang brag about? He only killed 460 Confucian scholars, but we killed 46,000 intellectuals. There are people who accuse us of practicing dictatorship like Emperor Qin Shihuang and we admit it all. It fits the reality. It is a pity that they did not give us enough credit, so we need to add to it.” [2]

Let’s take a look at China’s arduous 55 years under the rule of the CCP. 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 tried to purge dissidents and opposing social classes, using violence and deception to force all Chinese people to become the obedient servants of its tyrannical rule. (…… more details of the third of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party)

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This is the second of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, by The Epoch Times, Dec 09, 2004-

On the Beginnings of the Chinese Communist Party

Foreword

According to the book Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters (Shuowen Jiezi) written by Xu Shen (d. 147 AD in the Eastern Han Dynasty), the traditional Chinese character Dang, meaning “party” or “gang,” consists of two radicals that correspond to “promote or advocate” and “dark or black” respectively. Putting the two radicals together, the character means “promoting darkness.” “Party” or “party member” (which can also be interpreted as “gang” or “gang member”) carries a derogatory meaning.

Confucius said, “A nobleman is proud but not aggressive, sociable but not partisan.” The footnotes of Analects (Lunyu) explain, “People who help one another conceal their wrongdoings are said to be forming a gang (party).”

In Chinese history, political cliques were often called Peng Dang (cabal). It is a synonym for “gang of scoundrels” in traditional Chinese culture and is associated with the implication of ganging up for selfish purposes.

Why did the Communist Party emerge, grow and eventually seize power in contemporary China? The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has constantly instilled into the Chinese people’s minds that history has chosen the CCP, that the people have chosen the CCP, and that “without the CCP there would be no new China.”

Did the Chinese people choose the Communist Party? Or, did the Communist Party gang up and force Chinese people to accept it? We must find answers from history.

From the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) to the early years of the Republic period (1911-1949), China experienced tremendous external shocks and extensive attempts at internal reform. Chinese society was in painful turmoil. Many intellectuals and people with lofty ideals wanted to save the country and its people.

However, in the midst of national crisis and chaos, their sense of anxiety grew, leading first to disappointment and then complete despair. Like people who turn to any available doctor in times of illness, they looked outside China for their solutions. When the British and French styles failed, they switched to the Russian method. They did not hesitate to prescribe the most extreme remedy for the illness, in the hope that China would quickly become strong.

The May Fourth movement in 1919 was a thorough reflection of this despair. Some people advocated anarchism; others proposed to overthrow the doctrines of Confucius, and still others suggested bringing in foreign culture. In short, they rejected Chinese traditional culture and opposed the Confucian doctrine of the middle way. Eager to take a shortcut, they advocated the destruction of everything traditional.

On the one hand, the radical members among them did not have a way to serve the country, and on the other hand, they believed firmly in their own ideals and wills. They felt the world was hopeless, believing only they had found the right approach to China’s future development. They were passionate for revolution and violence.

Different experiences led to different theories, principles and paths among various groups. Eventually a group of people met Communist Party representatives from the Soviet Union. The idea of “using violent revolution to seize political power,” lifted from the theory of Marxism-Leninism, appealed to their anxious minds and conformed to their desire to save the country and its people.

They immediately formed an alliance with each other. They introduced communism, a completely foreign concept, into China. Altogether thirteen representatives attended the first CCP Congress.

Later, some of them died, some ran away, and some, betraying the CCP or becoming opportunistic, worked for the occupying Japanese and became traitors to China, or quit the CCP and joined the Kuomintang (the Nationalist Party, hereafter referred to as KMT).

By 1949 when the CCP came to power in China, only Mao Zedong (also spelled Mao Tse Tung) and Dong Biwu still remained of the original thirteen Party members. It is unclear whether the founders of the CCP were aware at the time that the “deity” they had introduced from the Soviet Union was in reality an evil specter, and the remedy they sought for strengthening the nation was actually a deadly poison.

The All-Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) (later known as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), having just won its revolution, was obsessed with ambition for China.

In 1920, the Soviet Union established the Far Eastern Bureau, a branch of the Third Communist International, or the Comintern. It was responsible for the establishment of a Communist party in China and other countries. Sumiltsky was the head of the bureau, and Grigori Voitinsky was a deputy manager. They began to prepare for the establishment of the CCP with Chen Duxiao and others.

The proposal they submitted to the Far Eastern Bureau in June 1921 to establish a China branch of the Comintern indicated that the CCP was a branch led by the Comintern. On July 23, 1921, under the help of Nikolsky and Maring from the Far East Bureau, the CCP was officially formed.

The Communist movement was then introduced to China as an experiment, and the CCP has set itself above all, conquering all in its path, thereby bringing endless catastrophe to China. (…… more details ……)

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This is the first of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, by The Epoch Times, Dec 09, 2004-

On What the Communist Party Is

Foreword

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. (……more details……)

>> Video: Part 2, Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party – On the Beginnings of the Chinese Communist Party

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Introduction, The Epoch Times, Dec 01, 2004-

The titles of the “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party” are:

1. On What the Communist Party Is ( Video )
2. On the Beginnings of the Chinese Communist Party (Video)
3. On the Tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party (Video)
4. On How the Communist Party Is an Anti-Universe Force (Video)
5. On the Collusion of Jiang Zemin with the Chinese Communist Party to Persecute Falun Gong (Video)
6. On How the Chinese Communist Party Destroyed Traditional Culture (Video)
7. On the Chinese Communist Party’s History of Killing (Video)
8. On How the Chinese Communist Party Is an Evil Cult (Video)
9. On the Unscrupulous Nature of the Chinese Communist Party (Video)

More than a decade after the fall of the former Soviet Union and Eastern European communist regimes, the international communist movement has been spurned worldwide. The demise of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is only a matter of time.

Nevertheless, before its complete collapse, the CCP is trying to tie its fate to the Chinese nation, with its 5000 years of civilization. This is a disaster for the Chinese people. The Chinese people must now face the impending questions of how to view the CCP, how to evolve China into a society without the CCP, and how to pass on the Chinese heritage. The Epoch Times is now publishing a special editorial series, “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.” Before the lid is laid on the coffin of the CCP, we wish to pass a final judgment on it and on the international communist movement, which has been a scourge to humanity for over a century.

Throughout its 80-plus years, everything the CCP has touched has been marred with lies, wars, famine, tyranny, massacre and terror. Traditional faiths and principles have been violently destroyed. Original ethical concepts and social structures have been disintegrated by force. Empathy, love and harmony among people have been twisted into struggle and hatred. Veneration and appreciation of the heaven and earth have been replaced by an arrogant desire to “fight with heaven and earth.” The result has been a total collapse of social, moral and ecological systems, and a profound crisis for the Chinese people, and indeed for humanity. All these calamities have been brought about through the deliberate planning, organization, and control of the CCP.

As a famous Chinese poem goes, “Deeply I sigh in vain for the falling flowers.” The end is near for the communist regime, which is barely struggling to survive. The days before its collapse are numbered. The Epoch Times believes the time is now ripe, before the CCP’s total demise, for a comprehensive look back, in order to fully expose how this largest cult in history has embodied the wickedness of all times and places. We hope that those who are still deceived by the CCP will now see its nature clearly, purge its poison from their spirits, extricate their minds from its evil control, free themselves from the shackles of terror, and abandon for good all illusions about it.

The CCP’s rule is the darkest and the most ridiculous page in Chinese history. Among its unending list of crimes, the vilest must be its persecution of Falun Gong. In persecuting “Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance” Jiang Zemin has driven the last nail into the CCP’s coffin. The Epoch Times believes that by understanding the true history of the CCP, we can help prevent such tragedies from ever recurring. At the same time, we hope each one of us would reflect on our innermost thoughts and examine whether our cowardice and compromise have made us accomplices in many tragedies that could have been avoided.

The Epoch Times Editorial Board

(Last Updated on January 10, 2005)

– Official site of the “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party”

New Book: “A China More Just” – Story of Lawyer Gao Zhisheng

The Broad Book, Inc–

Book: A China More Just
– My Fight as a Rights Lawyer in the World’s Largest Communist State

Author : Gao Zhisheng
Publisher : Broad Press USA
Published Date : 2007-7
ISBN : 1-932674-36-5
Sale Price : US$14.95 (HK$116, NT$478)
Order online: Here

Introduction:

Attorney. Activist. Fearless. Faithful.

The story of one man who has taken on the world’s largest authoritarian regime… And, in the eyes of many, won.

Born and raised in a cave with only the stars to tell time, Gao Zhisheng rose from poverty to become China’s most important lawyer. He has courageously sought justice for vulnerable groups such as the poor, the disabled, and the persecuted. Yet Gao’s fortitude has drawn the ire of Communist authorities.

Today, physical threat and police surveillance are a constant reality for both Gao and his family. Undeterred, he has responded in the nonviolent tradition of Gandhi by launching nationwide hunger strikes to intensify the call for justice and human rights in China. His undaunted resolve and generous spirit have won the hearts of millions. Whispers can be heard in China’s streets, “Will Gao Zhisheng become the next president?”

Part memoir, part social commentary, part call to action, A China More Just is a penetrating account of contemporary China through the life of one attorney. Its selection of writings takes readers from a village in rural China to urban courtrooms, mountainside torture chambers, and the halls of a reluctant government. A China More Just is at once witty and raw, touching and wrenching, sober and playful.

About the Author

Gao Zhisheng rose from utter poverty to become one of China’s most acclaimed lawyers and a leading advocate for the oppressed. Life took a most unlikely turn in 1991 when Gao happened to learn, while selling vegetables by the roadside, that the country was looking to train new lawyers. Though possessed only a middle-school education, Gao taught himself law and passed the national bar examination in 1995.

Gao made headlines in 1999 by winning the largest medical malpractice lawsuit in Chinese history. In 2001, China’s Ministry of Justice named him one of the nation’s top-ten attorneys. A Christian, Gao has since become known for his tenacious pursuit of justice on behalf of China’s most vulnerable—from exploited coal miners to democracy advocates, the poor, and victims of religious persecution.

In 2005 Gao wrote a series of open letters to China’s authorities detailing his investigation into the torture of members of the Falun Gong. Thereafter he found himself “besieged,” as he put it, by infuriated Party rulers.

Gao’s Beijing law firm was soon after shut down, his family put under surveillance, and attempts made on his life.

In 2006 he initiated a series of hunger strikes that involved thousands worldwide.

Gao’s maltreatment by the Chinese regime has been the subject of formal resolutions by the United States Congress and the European Parliament. Rights groups such as Amnesty International have campaigned to ensure his welfare. He has been featured by The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian and many other prominent media.

In 2006 Gao became the recipient of the Chinese Liberal Culture Movement’s Special Human Rights Award, the Asia-Pacific Human Rights Foundation’s Human Rights Champion Award, and in 2007 was awarded the American Board of Trial Advocates’ Courageous Advocacy Award.

He is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

Table of Contents
Preface

ONE Growing Up Tender Yet Strong

From Peasant Child to Respected Attorney —
“When will we ever have enough to eat?”
The Winding Road Home
Perseverance Rewarded by Heaven

Returning to the Cave —
Lunar New Year
An Old Copper Ladle
A Handful of Fried Soybeans
My Common-Folk Mother

TWO A Lonely Mission

The Plight of China’s Lawyers
Behind Each Case, Systemic Problems
A Loner’s Solitude

THREE Advocating for Rights

Disabled Children
A Rural Road
The Oil Investors
The Spiritual Group
Forced Sterilizations
The Petitioners
The Shanwei Massacre

FOUR Open Letters on Falun Gong

Open Letter to the National People’s Congress
Open Letter to Chairman Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao
Second Open Letter to Chairman Hu and Premier Wen
Open Letter to Chairman Hu, Premier Wen, and My Fellow Chinese

FIVE The Siege on My Family: A Journal

Early risers of a different sort
Like a sudden gust, police appear
Leave the Party, I tell my police “friends”
Covert and overt spying
On New Year’s Day, as unprincipled as ever
A new record: twelve vehicles!
The battle expands
“He’s a Falun Gong!”
Guo Feixiong’s exit
The most shameless of villains
Have they any way out?
Love that flows like the Yangtze
“Send in reinforcements!”
A contrived “car accident”
Reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution
Beijing’s insane policeman
“Whoever gives him subsistence money…”
A chat with the Beijing Judicial Bureau
Ending the violence and hatred

SIX Breaking from the Party

My Wife Quits the Party
The Proudest Day of My Life
On the Verge of Collapse

SEVEN The Hunger Strike Movement

Initiating the Hunger Strike
Responding to Arrests and Beatings
Something Anyone Can Do
Staying the Course with Nonviolence
What Would Heaven Want, Dear Brothers and Sisters?
Our Victories

Preface

– by Gao Zhisheng
“It is our misfortune to live in the China of this historical period. No one on this earth has ever had to experience or witness the suffering that has befallen us! Yet it is also our fortune to live in the China of this historical period. For we will experience and witness how the greatest people on earth banished this suffering once and for all!”

Such were my concluding remarks on December 21, 2005, offered as stinging tears rolled down my cheeks when I addressed fellow citizens who had come to Beijing to petition the government.

I have never been a man of letters, and so it never occurred to me that I would write a book—much less in times as stifling as these.

In this time when the majority of my fellow Chinese have become numb to, or have even adapted to, the darkness and fallacies of this age, my writings have sparked hatred and fear in those despots who operate in the shadows. When the passion, the edge, and the righteous indignation that mark some of my words (in particular those exposing the infuriating wickedness of this dictatorship) at times pierce through the thick darkness enshrouding my fellow citizens, they—having long since grown acclimated to, or been forced to acclimate to, the darkness—may find the light of my words unsettling. This suggests that I have failed to “acclimate” to the national psyche of China. So be it.

This era is not just about enduring setbacks, however. We also have our share of achievements in this day. For me, someone with merely eight years of formal education, it is an achievement to have written something others want to read, and even more so to see it published in book form.

It’s really not that I am fond of heaviness. But insofar as my writing is undeniably “heavy,” it is because the weight, the burden, that I feel forces me to think and compels me to act, to pick up my pen. I must narrate this story. I am moved by an ardent hope that by articulating it, I may in some way help to relieve China of the crushing burden on her back.

Strictly speaking, I should be counted as an activist, not a thinker; much less am I the founder of some institution. I have sought in my writing a style that delights in its uninhibitedness and that speaks directly from the heart. Much of my writing is improvisational and spurred by circumstance. I myself am surprised at times by the roughness that marks. Whatever the case, these are words that tell a tale both of the people’s violent, sanguinary, bitter pain, as well as of the noble character, dignity, and resoluteness of the freedom fighters who are counted among them.

Yet no words, however strong, can possibly describe the darkness and terrible barbarity of today’s dictators in China, nor the tragic annihilation of Chinese culture that they have perpetrated. Though I have strived to convey these qualities through my writing, having attempted to unveil merely one corner of China’s darkness, I cannot help but feel the futility and frailty of language.

In today’s China, where the forces of incivility run rampant, it is common practice to mock what is beautiful and to beautify what is vile. A pathological China is not ready for what I write. But I hope such a China will soon emerge.

It is my sincerest wish that soon a China will exist where there is no need for chronicling such as mine.

– original report from Broad Book, Inc

Video: “A China More Just”, Asia Talk program by NTDTV, 32’44”

Sarah Cook is a co-editor of the book “A China More Just” by renowned human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng. She shares her insights on the book, as well as her experience getting involved in the campaign to free Gao. Gao Zhisheng is currently being persecuted in China for speaking out on human rights issues there.

Book to read: The Coming China Wars

InformIt.com-

Name of the book: Coming China Wars, The: Where They Will Be Fought and How They Can Be Won
Author: Peter Navarro.
Published by: Financial Times Prentice Hall.
ISBN-10: 0-13-228128-7;
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-228128-7;
Published: Oct 19, 2006; Copyright 2007;
Dimensions 6×9;
Pages: 288;
Edition: 1st.

Book Description

China’s breakneck industrialization is placing it on a collision course with the entire world. Tomorrow’s China Wars will be fought over everything from decent jobs, livable wages, and leading-edge technologies to strategic resources such as oil, copper, and steel…even food, water, and air.

In The Coming China Wars, best-selling author Peter Navarro previews all these potential conflicts—and reveals the urgent, radical decisions that must be made to avoid catastrophe.

You’ll learn how China’s thirst for oil is driving nuclear proliferation in Iran, genocide in the Sudan, even Japan’s remilitarization. You’ll discover China’s shocking role in the drug trade and how its reborn flesh trade may help trigger tomorrow’s worst AIDS crisis.

Navarro also reveals how China has become the world’s most ruthless imperialist…how it is promoting global environmental disaster… and, perhaps most terrifying of all, how this nuclear superpower and pirate nation may be spiraling toward internal chaos.

The threat is real. We all must come to understand it and then act! Start here and now by arming yourself with the information and insights of The Coming China Wars.

The “China Price”: Conquering the world’s export markets

The real story behind China’s “weapons of mass production”

China versus U.S.: The “blood for oil” flashpoints

The coming U.S./China showdown over oil

Pirate Nation: China’s state-sanctioned thievery

How China’s counterfeit drugs and products can literally kill you

Triggering tomorrow’s worst AIDS crisis

China’s 21st century flesh trade: The seeds of a global health disaster

Comments:

“Peter Navarro has captured the breadth of areas where China and the United States have fundamental conflicts of business, economic and strategic interests. He puts this into a global context demonstrating where China’s current development course can lead to conflict. His recommendations for nations to coalesce to respond to the challenges posed by China are practical. This book should be in the hands of every businessperson, economist and policy-maker.”
–Dr. Larry M. Wortzel, Chairman, US-China Economic and Security Review Commission

“The Coming China Wars is a gripping, fact-filled account of the dark side of China’s rise that will be of interest to anyone interested in this complex and fascinating country. Navarro makes no pretense toward searching for the middle ground in the China debate. He issues a call to arms for China and the rest of the world to act now to address the country’s mounting problems–pollution, public health, intellectual property piracy, resource scarcity and more–or risk both serious instability within China and military conflict between China and other major powers.”
– Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director of Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

“What Al Gore does for climate change, Peter Navarro does for China. This book will hit you right between the eyes. A gargantuan wake-up call.”
– Stuart L. Hart, S.C. Johnson Chair of Sustainable Global Enterprise, Cornell University, Author of “Capitalism at the Crossroads”

“This is a well researched and illuminating book and is a necessary counter to a large body of opinion that posits an inevitable and even peaceful rise of China and chooses to ignore most of the author’s message.”
– Richard Fisher, Vice President, International Assessment and Strategy Center

– original report from InformIt.com

Publications Censored In China, for All History Is Political (cont’d)

By Kent Ewing, The Asia Times, Jan 26, 2007-

(cont’d)

In a speech accepting the PEN award, Zhang said that while life for intellectuals is much better in China today than during her father’s time, the country’s breakneck economic growth poses a new threat to its people: “The situation now is very different. Intellectuals are living better, and they can express their own voices up to a point.

“But there is now another situation – many people are more interested in pursuing material [wealth] rather than dispassionately understanding the depth of humanity and the truth of life … We seem to have come out from one kind of totalitarianism, and we turned off and walked right under another form of domination.”

In a rare show of outrage for a Chinese author, Zhang issued a 1,000-word attack on the GAPP after the ban of her most recent book, an account of seven Peking opera stars who were friends of her family. She told the Post that the ban “infringed my personal rights” of freedom of expression and publication.

The other most recently banned titles represent an interesting cross-section of China’s bureaucratic paranoia – from I Object: The Road to Politics by a People’s Congress Member, journalist Zhu Ling’s account of peasant activist Yao Lifa’s long struggle to bring fair, democratic elections to a local legislature in Hubei province, to Hu Fayun’s This Is How It Goes@SARS.com, the story of a woman whose obsession with the Internet during the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) crisis jeopardizes her relationship with a local politician.

This week the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television took the crusade for political correctness even further, ordering satellite television networks to show only “ethically inspiring  dramas” during prime time.

The order, which affects 48 national channels, will be in force for eight months, starting in February. It prohibits prime-time airing of imported cartoons and dramas, programs involving crime, sex, divorce or legal cases, and dramas in local dialects or even local accents.

With the censors’ ambit spreading so far and wide, analysts point to one clear message: Chinese leaders want to see nothing in the media that could undermine President Hu Jintao’s vision of a “harmonious society” in the run-up to the CCP’s 17th congress this autumn. The congress is the first to be chaired by Hu, and no one is allowed to spoil the party.

Hu took over the presidency from Jiang Zemin in 2003 and is also the party’s general secretary and head of the army. The congress, which will witness substantial changes in leadership posts and set the course for the country’s development over the next five years, is expected to be a crowning moment for him.

Ironically, when Hu assumed the presidency touted as a reformer, there was hope of a new openness toward the media. Indeed, in tandem with his call for better economic management, the new president encouraged journalists to play a more aggressive watchdog role in society by reporting on the epidemic of corruption and fraud that has become a defining characteristic of Chinese bureaucracy.

But the new attitude was short-lived. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, Hu has presided over “a major crackdown on the media”.

That crackdown attracted international condemnation last year with the jailing of New York Times researcher Zhao Yan and the chief China correspondent for Singapore’s Straits Times, Ching Cheong. Zhao was sentenced to three years in prison on what was widely considered a trumped-up charge of fraud, and Ching was jailed for five years for selling state secrets to Taiwan in a verdict that was met with disbelief by many of his fellow journalists.

Beijing’s clampdown on editorial staff who work for local media has attracted less attention but is no less real.

Last year, editors were sacked from three newspapers that dared to defy the censors’ dictates – the Beijing News, the Southern Metropolis News and the Public Interest Times – and party propagandists also temporarily closed Bingdian, a lively four-page weekly supplement to the state-run China Youth Daily, because of its coverage of controversial issues.

In addition, the popular Beijing-based weekly newsmagazine Lifeweek received a reprimand from the Propaganda Department for “defiance” of the party mandate not to cover politically sensitive events. While the department did not specify which event Lifeweek was “guilty” of covering, it’s a fair bet the censure was related to the magazine’s October 30 cover story on the 30th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution, which featured a front-page photo of Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife and one of the notorious Gang of Four who led the long and bloody purge.

Authorities have also shut down Internet blogs and chat forums that have crossed the censors’ line.

It’s no surprise that Reporters Without Borders ranked China 159th out of 167 countries in its world press-freedom index last year. And while the country has promised to grant foreign journalists unprecedented freedom of travel and coverage when China hosts the Summer Olympic Games in 2008, that promise means nothing to Chinese journalists, bloggers and authors who continue to be muzzled.

For a country that likes to lecture Japan and other nations about facing up to their history, China still has a deep aversion to reckoning with its own.  (END)

– Kent Ewing is a teacher and writer at Hong Kong International School. He can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk .

<< Previous 

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original repot The Asia Times

Publications Censored In China, for All History Is Political

By Kent Ewing, The Asia Times, Jan 26, 2007-

HONG KONG – Last year, China marked the 30th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s death with great fetes of veneration and tribute. But there was no official mention of the millions who lost their lives as a result of the Great Helmsman’s famine-producing industrial policies, brutal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) purges or the 10-year exercise in persecution known as the Cultural Revolution.

On Mao’s dark side, the state media were silent.

More of the same can be expected this year as Chinese intellectuals gear up to mark the 50th anniversary of the anti-rightist movement that led to the death or banishment of a half-million people for speaking out against misguided Mao polices such as the Great Leap Forward.

And this year, the party has an additional reason to tighten control on the media. Its 17th CCP Congress is to be convened in the autumn, and it is essential to maintain political and social stability. And for the Communist Party, control on the media is a must for stability.

In a preemptive strike, the publicity department of the party’s Central Committee has warned state media off covering significant historical events without first obtaining permission.

This comes on top of last year’s advisory that the media should restrict coverage of such events to official notices issued by the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Moreover, citing anonymous sources, the South China Morning Post reported that the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) has banned the distribution or sale of eight books by prominent writers and intellectuals and threatened publishers who defy the ban with tough financial penalties. Tellingly, one of the banned books, Past Stories of Peking Opera Stars, was written by Zhang Yihe, daughter of former transport minister Zhang Bojun, who was one of the chief targets of the anti-rightist campaign.

The ideological crackdown against Zhang Bojun and other intellectuals came in reaction to the so-called Hundred Flowers Blooming Movement in 1956-57, a period during which Mao invited criticism of the government with the ostensible aim of improving policymaking. The name of the movement was inspired by a poem that read: “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend.”

Historians debate whether the movement was a trap or simply went beyond what Mao had bargained for. Whatever the case, the purges that followed saw many intellectuals who had criticized the party labeled “rightists” and sentenced to re-education through labor or, in some cases, death.

Zhang Bojun, dubbed the “No 1 rightist” at the time for advocating a more democratic socialist system, died in 1969. Unlike some other famous victims of the purge – for example, former premier Zhu Rongji – he did not outlive Mao and was never rehabilitated into public life. But his author-daughter has taken up his legacy in a number of popular books she has written.

For her efforts, Zhang Yihe was given the Freedom to Write Award in 2004 by the Independent Chinese PEN Center for her book The Past Is Not Like Smoke, a memoir explicitly about her father and other intellectuals, such as Luo Longji, who were persecuted during the anti-rightist campaign.

The PEN selection committee said of Zhang’s book: “This kind of writing is not only an indictment of the age of darkness, but it is also an affirmation of the indefatigable human dignity and a negation of all attempts to destroy that dignity.”

The book, even in its heavily edited form, was soon banned in China, but an unexpurgated version, titled The Last Nobles, was published with great success in Hong Kong, and pirated copies flourished on the mainland.

Zhang’s A Memoir of Ma Lianliang was also banned on the mainland because of its political content. ( to be cont’d…)

Next >>

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original repot The Asia Times

China Urged to Get Recent Ban Lifted on Eight Books

Reporters Without Borders, 25 January 2007-

Reporters Without Borders today called on Chinese culture minister Sun Jiazheng to intervene to get a newly- imposed ban lifted on eight books – some by journalists – about social developments in recent years in China. The books were banned last week by Wu Shulin, the deputy director of the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP).

“The GAPP’s control over publications is very disturbing,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Aside from the censorship of these eight books, it is the freedom of expression of all Chinese journalists and intellectuals that is being violated.”

The press freedom organisation added: “The government must lose no time in ensuring that the GAPP stops exercising authoritarian control over all books in China. As things stand, publishers have to get a licence from this department every time they want to bring out a new book.”

The eight newly-banned books include Past Stories of Peking Opera Stars by Zhang Yihe, the memoirs of People’s Daily journalist Yuan Ying, The Press by Zhu Huaxiang (about the Chinese news media) and This is how it goes at SARS.com by Hu Fayun.

They are on a list of books which, according to the Communist Party of China’s Propaganda Department, “overstepped the line” in 2006.

They also include a book about the Maoist “Great Leap Forward” and one about an independent candidate for local elections.

Several press reports quoted GAPP deputy director Wu as saying Yuan’s book divulged state secrets and that all the publishers should be severely punished.

Zhang described the accusations against her as “anti-revolutionary” and voiced frustration at the fact that her last two books were also banned. She said she would take the issue to the courts. “Chinese intellectuals have been deprived of all rights to free speech,” Zhang said. “If we keep silent today, tomorrow they can do the same thing to other writers and eventually the entire intellectual community will be muzzled.”

Hu said the bans were aimed at “twisting history by erasing people’s memories,” but called them ridiculous and said they would not prevent people from getting access to the books on the Internet.

———-
original report from   Reporters Without Border

The Writing on the Wall: China – Power, Corruption and Lies

The Guardian, Monday January 8, 2007-

To the west, China is a waking economic giant, poised to dominate the world. But, argues Will Hutton in this extract from his new book, we have consistently exaggerated and misunderstood the threat – and the consequences could be grave.

( – Will Hutton’s The Writing on the Wall is published on January 18 at pounds 20. To pre-order a copy for pounds 18 with free uk p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875 )

But the closer you get to what is happening on the ground in China, its so-called capitalism looks nothing like any form of capitalism the west has known and the transition from communism remains fundamentally problematic. The alpha and omega of China’s political economy is that the Communist party remains firmly in the driving seat not just of government, but of the economy – a control that goes into the very marrow of how ownership rights are conceived and business strategies devised. The western conception of the free exercise of property rights and business autonomy that goes with it, essential to any notion of capitalism, does not exist in China.

The truth is that China is not the socialist market economy the party describes, nor moving towards capitalism as the western consensus believes. Rather it is frozen in a structure that I describe as Leninist corporatism – and which is unstable, monumentally inefficient, dependent upon the expropriation of peasant savings on a grand scale, colossally unequal and ultimately unsustainable. It is Leninist in that the party still follows Lenin’s dictum of being the vanguard, monopoly political driver and controller of the economy and society. And it is corporatist because the framework for all economic activity in China is one of central management and coordination from which no economic actor, however humble, can opt out.

In this environment genuine wholesale privatisation is impossible and liberalisation has well-defined limits, as President Hu Jintao himself brutally reminds us. The party, he says, “takes a dominant role and coordinates all sectors. Party members and party organisations in government departments should be brought into full play so as to realise the party’s leadership over state affairs”. It may be true that party organisations in the provinces (some with populations bigger than Britain’s) and in the chief cities are jealous of their autonomous local political control, but all retain the discretionary power to do what they choose and override any challenge or complaint from any non-state actor – or, indeed, from state actors if they cross the will of the party.

Absolute power corrupts, and the Chinese Communist party has become one of the most corrupt organisations the world has ever witnessed. The combination of absolute power and an ideology that palpably no longer describes reality is a virus that is morally and psychologically undermining the regime. And if the regime wobbles, then its capacity to sustain the unsustainable economic structures will wobble and Leninist corporatism will unravel. Beijing’s authority could fragment and China’s provinces reassert their destructive independence as they did in the 1910s and 20s, or a new and fiercely repressive regime could try to hold the country together abandoning economic openness and market reforms – and even pick some international fights (such as invading Taiwan?) to rally the country to its side. It is because this prospect is so real that the task of peacefully moving to a sustainable capitalism, and building the necessary institutions to do it, is so vital for both China and the world. (…  read more from The Guardian’s report about the book, The Writing on the Wall)

Chinese writer fears went too far in toning down his latest book

Jonathan Watts in Beijing, The Guardian, October 9, 2006-

Millions of pints of blood are pumped through underground pipelines from a big developing country to wealthy consumers in the United States and elsewhere. The blood trade has produced the most spectacular boom in human history. In just five years, the formerly dirt-poor state at the heart of the haemo-business has become the richest nation on earth.

Such is the scenario of the novel that Yan Lianke – one of China’s greatest living authors and fiercest satirists – was planning to write until the censors intervened. Based on a three-year study of the blood-selling scandal in his native Henan province, The Dream of Ding Village was to be the defining work of his career; not just an elegantly crafted piece of literature but a devastating critique of China’s runaway development.

But it has turned out to be one of the most traumatic experiences of his artistic life. For his attempt to tackle a harrowing man-made disaster, Yan received a ban from the censors, became embroiled in a legal dispute with his publisher, and – worst of all – suffers a lingering sense of shame that he compromised too many principles.

In a rare insight, the author told the Guardian how he attempted forestall a ban by doing the censors’ work for them. Out went the novel’s most ambitious features: the blood pipeline, the global trade angle and direct criticism of national politics. Instead he narrowed the focus to a single village, where blood is bought and sold with horrific consequences. “This is not the book I originally wanted to write,” says Yan, who has won China’s top two literary awards. “I censored myself very rigorously. I didn’t mention senior leaders. I reduced the scale. I thought my self-censorship was perfect.”

But the authorities still issued a “three nos” order: no distribution, no sales and no promotion. Yan found out it was banned when he tried to sue his publisher, the Shanghai Literary Arts Publishing Group, for failing to pay a promised advance on his royalties and a donation to the village where the book was researched. (more from The Guardian’s report )