Peeling the Camouflage Off the Party Culture

Facebook Logo LinkedIn Logo Twitter Logo Email Logo Pinterest Logo

The stench in an old-fashioned privy in the countryside is pretty bad, but after a little while, from force of habit and psychological conditioning, one will find it much more bearable. This is analogous to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) culture we in China live in - we seldom find anything wrong, and moreover, it even feels pretty good. This is a situation of one no longer recognising the hardships one has been soaked in for so long. But if you return from abroad, when you suddenly come back into contact with the Party culture, you will sense it and will surely find it unimaginable and hard to accept. Here, I will give you a few brief examples.

I. Not for the People

The People's Republic, People's Government, People's Army, People's Court, People's Hospitals and People's Currency (RMB)... the Party culture is full of flowery language about being for the people. In actuality, however, it's different. For instance, the People's Government: power is traded for money; officials and merchants collude with each other; officials and bandits cover for each other; office-holding becomes commercialised; people are forbidden to appeal or parade; and Falun Gong, which helps people keep healthy and fit, is persecuted.

Today's People's Court: don't show up without money, even if you hold the truth. A death-penalty-criminal can be set free immediately as long as he or she has money. Everything has a price. Criminals can remain at large.

People's hospital: people cannot be admitted unless they pay up front for the outrageously high hospital fees, otherwise the door is shut and the ailing patient has to wait for death at home.

People's Currency (yuan RMB): Today, 90 percent of the entire country's money is concentrated with a few leaders who account for less than 1 percent of the population. These high-ranking officials, instead of depositing these enormous amounts of US dollars into the People's Bank, invest the money in foreign banks.

The Public Security Department, which by definition means "The Security of the Public," nowadays gangs up with bandits and they wallow together. They ignore evildoers but specifically arrest good people who practise "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance."

Nine-year compulsory education: although by name it's compulsory, in fact, the phenomenon of overcharging and unauthorised pooling of funds is "as widespread as the hairs of an ox." In the last few years, a new fee called "seating fee" has emerged. This means if the parents give the teacher a large amount of cash in a red envelope, their child can be seated in the classroom's first rows; a small amount or no cash at all means the child can only be seated in the rear of the classroom or might even be squeezed out. Large numbers of workers' and farmers' children have to quit school due to poverty. The CCP came up with another idea and calls it the fine-sounding, "Project Hope." It is actually a project to save the Party's image, using the very limited number of those benefiting from the project to cover up the real circumstances of vast numbers of children losing their opportunity for schooling.

II. The Party's Leading Edge

The Chinese Communist Party's flag symbol is a hammer and sickle, which means the nation is led by the working classes and is based on a worker-peasant alliance, that the proletariat leads everything. But nowadays, where can you find a single Party leader who is a genuine proletarian? Uncountable numbers of workers have lost their jobs and huge numbers of peasants' good farmlands were been taken for other uses. With their ability to make a living in question, they are now barely existing, in great misery. How is it possible to call them "the leading social class?" The real leading social class is indulging in a dissipated, destructive life style, prostitution and gambling!

III. What's Behind a Name?

"Laid off": I remember in the 1960s, when a capitalist country had an occasional unemployment phenomenon, the party would attack the capitalist system saying how bad it was. Today in China, with large numbers of factories going out of business, the workers who were once called the "masters of the country" more commonly than not are now unemployed. The Party has a fine-sounding name for this: "Laid off and waiting for employment." It is supposed to sound better than unemployment.

"Inspection": now many offices and work unit officials go on retreats and enjoy the beauties of nature, travel abroad or dally with women, at government expense, and call it by the fine-sounding name, "inspection." Clubs and bars, thinly camouflaged brothels, can be seen everywhere.

IV. Pages and Pages of Empty words

"Against the Right": At first, the Party encouraged people to offer their opinions, to criticise the government. The political slogans of the day decried, "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend." "Weed through the old to bring forth the new." "Offer your opinion to the Party." "Do not settle accounts with the masses after a political movement is over." However, the Party made an abrupt 180-degree turn, labelled those who offered opinions as "anti-Party," and "anti-socialism," and put "the right wing" hat on them for twenty years, making them the target of all the persecutory movements and struggles in the coming years.

"Great Leap Forward": "East wind prevails over the west wind," "Catches up with England and surpasses America," "The imperialism led by America is a paper tiger," "One mu (about 8 sq. yards) has yielded ten thousand Jins (about 11,000 lbs) of grains." ... During the Cultural Revolution: "Overthrow Traitor, Spy, and Renegade Liu Shaoqi (the National President). Permanently expel him from the Party." Lin Biao flattered Mao Zedong by saying that Mao's "one word is worth 10,000 words."

Even when the SARS epidemic was acute, on April 2nd, 2003, the official media published a report entitled, "The SARS epidemic has been effectively brought under control." The next day, Health Minister Zhang Wenkang spoke at a press conference to international and national journalists saying, "Working, living and travelling are all safe in China now."

The Chinese Communist Party-created scandal of the staged "Tiananmen Self-immolation" was another big lie, and full of discrepancies. No wonder someone made the wry, humorous comment, "In a society ruled by the Communist Party everything is fake, except swindlers."

V. Dictatorship

Looked at superficially, the CCP flaunts collective leadership, but it is in fact a dictatorship.

Over the past more than fifty years, whilst the CCP has ruled China it has undergone all manner of movements, such as Three Strikes, Five Strikes, Suppress the Counter-revolutionaries, Against the Right, Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the June 4th Massacre and the persecution of Falun Gong. The targets of these struggles have always been the people.

The Party culture serves its rulers. If you can rise above and beyond the Party culture and soberly look at the Party culture, you will wake up.

* * *

Facebook Logo LinkedIn Logo Twitter Logo Email Logo Pinterest Logo

You are welcome to print and circulate all articles published on Clearharmony and their content, but please quote the source.