China must confront dark past, says Mao confidant

• LazerLordz

  3 Jun 05, 03:30

  China must confront dark past, says Mao confidant
  
  Communist party veteran says Tiananmen students were right to demand more democracy and less corruption
  
  Jonathan Watts in Beijing
  Thursday June 2, 2005
  The Guardian
  
  His giant portrait still hangs in pride of place over the entrance to the Forbidden City, his embalmed body lies in a mausoleum in the middle of Tiananmen Square, and his visage is the only one to adorn the latest set of banknotes.
  
  Almost 30 years after his death, Mao still remains the central figure in China. While the legend and legacy of Mao Zedong is now under fresh, and intense, scrutiny overseas, there is no debate here.
  
  Article continues
  A new English biography of him by Jung Chang, the author of Wild Swans, describes Mao as the biggest mass murderer in history, yet the book will not be the talk of Beijing's coffee shops and restaurants, nor will its claims fill the pages of Chinese newspapers. For the book will not be published in China, and references to it are hard to come by on the internet.
  
  According to a confidant of Mao - a retired senior member of the Communist party - it is this refusal to confront and reassess the darkest episodes of China's past that is preventing the country from achieving its potential in the future.
  
  In a rare interview, Li Rui, Mao's personal secretary during the Great Helmsman's most murderous period in power, told the Guardian that the biggest problem facing modern China was its inability to face up to history.
  
  Few people know the horrors it contains more intimately than the 88-year-old, whose outspoken views have taken him in and out of the centre of power in Beijing and the political wilderness of gulags in freezing Heilongjiang province.
  
  Most of the punishments were meted out by his mentor and chief tormentor, Mao, whose worst crimes are still a taboo subject.
  
  "That's China's biggest problem," Mr Li said. "Mao was too autocratic. He couldn't bear to hear disagreements. He had a superstitious belief that he was always and absolutely right. But Mao's problem is also a problem of the system. It was caused by the party system."
  
  Mr Li has yet to read the new work on his former boss, but its claim that Mao was culpable for the deaths of tens of millions of people during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution is likely to come as no surprise.
  
  "Mao's way of thinking and governing was terrifying. He put no value on human life. The deaths of others meant nothing to him," said Li, who shakes with fury when asked about the chairman's personality. "I really didn't like him."
  
  Despite his unusually blunt criticism, Mr Li is no dissident. On the contrary, he is a party man through and through, a cadre who survived some of the roughest political turmoil of the 20th century with his reputation intact.
  
  His Beijing home in "Ministers House", an apartment block reserved for senior communist pensioners, is proof of that.
  
  But his fierce public comments are entirely consistent with a life history that is filled with rebellions, often at great personal cost, against those who abused their power. As a high school student in Hubei, he led student protests against local warlords, at university he threw himself into the movement against Japan, and soon afterwards he was thrown into prison by Chang Kai-shek's Kuomintang authorities for distributing Marxist textbooks.
  
  Upon his release he joined Mao's communist forces in Yanan, where he wrote stinging editorials for the party newspaper, Liberation. The attention proved dangerous. After a brutal purge against "reactionaries" he spent a year in prison on charges of spying.
  
  His independence of thought initially won him promotion to Mao's inner circle, where he held the advisory position of personal secretary. But in 1958 the same outspokenness got him thrown into a gulag for two years when he dared to publicly criticise the disastrous Great Leap Forward policy and, by extension, a leader who was starting to project himself as infallible.
  
  "As early as 1958, Mao said the personality cult was necessary," Mr Li said. "By the time of the Cultural Revolution, this had become an evil cult.
  
  "Mao's methods were even harsher than the emperors of ancient times. He tried to control the minds of the people."
  
  Yet, despite this and his own suffering, Mr Li accepts the official Communist party judgment that Mao was three parts bad, seven parts good, because his revolutionary achievements in expelling the colonial powers outweighed his failures once in power.
  
  Since the insanity of the Cultural Revolution, China has also changed almost beyond recognition. Its people are richer and far freer to travel and express their views in private and to foreigners, if not to the domestic public.
  
  "Now I can talk to you. In the past, if I talked like this, I would have been killed or jailed," Mr Li said.
  
  None the less, his poems and essays, which attack corruption, environmental destruction and domestic censorship, are published in Hong Kong. When a mainland newspaper, the Southern Metropolitan, printed his proposals for a tripartite division of power, the authorities blocked its distribution and changed the editor.
  
  Though the gulag is no longer a threat, there are considerable risks in speaking out. This has been shown by the frequent arrests of journalists, most recently Ching Cheong of the Straits Times, who faces charges of spying because he tried toacquire notes of secret interviews with the late premier Zhao Ziyang, who opposed the Tiananmen Square killings on June 4 1989.
  
  Mr Li is as disturbingly and admirably frank on this most sensitive of subjects as he is on every other.
  
  "The leadership did not understand the students. It worried that they were organised by foreign powers and were part of an attempted takeover by someone inside the party. The leadership's measures were wrong. The students' calls for more democracy and less corruption were right."
  
  Last year, on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests, there were reports that prominent officials were calling for a review of the crackdown, which the government has always justified as a necessary measure to put down a revolt that threatened stability.
  
  Mr Li is one of the few to risk retribution from the authorities by going public with such a call.
  
  "We should talk about it. We should reassess what happened on June 4. But we must do it properly, not now," he said. As for Nazism in Germany, or military dictatorship in South Korea, a judgment would eventually be made by history. "But it is hard to say if it will take five, 15 or 20 years."
  
  Chairman's legacy
  
  The Long March
  
  Mao was among several leaders of a protracted retreat that started in October 1934 and took the communist army 9,000km. Although it ensured the survival of the party, only 20,000 of the 90,000 who started out on the march in Jiangxi province made it to the end in Yanan in Shaanxi. As well as disease, exposure and battles with the Kuomintang, the high rate of fatalities was a result of repeated inner-party purges.
  
  Hundred Flowers Campaign
  
  Emboldened after the early successes of the republic, Mao decided in April 1957 to relax censorship and invite constructive criticism about his rule. "Let a hundred flowers bloom" in the arts, he said. But such was the flood of complaints that the Great Helmsman quickly changed his stance. Within six months, 300,000 intellectuals were either killed, imprisoned, sacked or branded "rightists" in need of political re-education.
  
  Great Leap Forward
  
  Mao was personally responsible for this disastrous attempt to jumpstart the economy by collectivising agricultural production and establishing smelting kilns in every village to match Britain's industrial output in 10 years. The radical experiment started with the attempted abolition of money and private property, and ended with a famine that killed between 30 million and 60 million peasants after the failure of harvests in 1959 and1960.
  
  Cultural Revolution
  
  An aging Mao attempted to build a new political base through the spread of a personality cult. From 1966 devoted students across the country formed Red Guard units, which spearheaded a vicious purge against Mao's opponents - real and imagined. Anything related to the Four Olds - old ideas, old customs, old culture and old habits - was a target. Millions died. When the students threatened to move out of control, Mao used the People's Liberation Army to crush dissent.
• suntze

  3 Jun 05, 16:32

  Unlikely to happen for a long time for the following (there may be more) reasons.
  1. fear of internal unrest and widespread disruption
  2. chaos leading to collapse of the political, economic and social structures
  3. internal unrest leading to separation of Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang
  4. encroachment by neighbouring countries at disputed boundaries and territorial waters (nei ruan wai huan)
  5. loss of power and privileges of those in CCP and being called to account for their roles in the past
  
  Perhaps in the future when reforms are deep and broad and those in power are sufficiently confident about issues of internal stability and accountability, China may then be able to come to terms with her past. Optimistically at the earliest IMO will be for the next generation of leaders.
  
  
• LazerLordz

  3 Jun 05, 20:24

  China deserves more forward looking and honest leaders than the current regime.
• sgdiehard

  4 Jun 05, 12:34

  Originally posted by LazerLordz:

  China deserves more forward looking and honest leaders than the current regime.

  China moved away from the dark ages of cultural revolution in 1976. In 30 years, chinese leadership changed, from Deng to Jiang and to Hu, from Zhao to Lee to Zhu and now Wen. We saw changes unique to china. Leaders are now more technocrats then political or military; the old leaders, like Jiang and Zhu relinguished their position together with the power completely; and this leads china to what it is today.
  
  Has china changed? yes. will it continue to change? yes. Are the changes enough? to the chinese in china, changes might have been a bit too fast for others in remote areas to catch up.
  
  For 1.3 billions people to agree on the kind of leaders they want or deserve to bring them in changing in the right direction and at the right time is certainly no easy task, for the people and the leaders. If we, as outsiders, want to offer any opinion, we need a lot more substantiation.
• suntze

  6 Jun 05, 16:35

  “China moved away from the dark ages of cultural revolution in 1976. In 30 years, chinese leadership changed, from Deng to Jiang and to Hu, from Zhao to Lee to Zhu and now Wen. We saw changes unique to china. Leaders are now more technocrats then political or military; the old leaders, like Jiang and Zhu relinguished their position together with the power completely; and this leads china to what it is today.”
  
  IMO, China has not yet moved away from the “dark ages”. Tiananmen in 1987 is a sharp reminder and even now, persecution of its intellectuals and public opinion leaders; the latest events being of course, the arrest of Ching Chong and the defection of Chen Yonglin. In domestic politics, Hu Jintao seems unlikely to dramatically deviate from his predecessors. He is on record justifying the Tiananmen crackdown as the correct decision ignoring the fact that the unfortunate turn of event was as much due to blunders by the CCP leadership.
  
  ”Has china changed? yes. will it continue to change? yes. Are the changes enough? to the chinese in china, changes might have been a bit too fast for others in remote areas to catch up. “
  
  The changes have mainly benefited those in the cities and rather less those in the villages, in which some 900m of ChinaÂ’s population still lives. In fact the difficulty faced is to bring the economic benefits to those in the rural areas. This is getting increasing urgent for those left out of the economic boom, or worse, being made to suffer due to displacement during redevelopment, corruption and environmental degradation.
  
  ”For 1.3 billions people to agree on the kind of leaders they want or deserve to bring them in changing in the right direction and at the right time is certainly no easy task, for the people and the leaders. If we, as outsiders, want to offer any opinion, we need a lot more substantiation.”
  
  We can agree that it is no easy task for 1.3 billion ppl to agree on the kind of leader. However, free and open election of leaders is, ATM, only practiced (to varying and limited extents), at the village and provincial level and certainly not at the highest levels. The root cause of the excesses of the Mao era or the blunder of the Tiananmen incident is a weak political system that is unable to avoid cult leadership and that lacks democratic moral authority, due accountability and rule of law.
  
  In the final analysis, to avoid similar or worse shocks in future, China urgently needs to build a much more robust political system to address real shortcomings. As long as this problem is not fundamentally redressed, significant risks remain for 1.3 billion ppl living in China as well as for ppl living in the surrounding region. The jury is out on whether the Hu/Wen leadership is able to carry out the fundamental political reforms that his predecessors have been unable to do.
  
  
• sgdiehard

  7 Jun 05, 11:08

  
  IMO, China has not yet moved away from the “dark ages”. Tiananmen in 1987 is a sharp reminder and even now, persecution of its intellectuals and public opinion leaders; the latest events being of course, the arrest of Ching Chong and the defection of Chen Yonglin. In domestic politics, Hu Jintao seems unlikely to dramatically deviate from his predecessors. He is on record justifying the Tiananmen crackdown as the correct decision ignoring the fact that the unfortunate turn of event was as much due to blunders by the CCP leadership.

  Obviously we have very different definition of "dark ages". If china had not progressed since, it would be another North Korea, in larger scale. But is there any comparison between china in the 70s and 90s, or present china and north korea, in terms of wealth for the ppl, freedom to travel within and outside of the country.......?
  
  The details about the Ching Chong and Chen sagas are not known yet, but if such events do determine the "state of development" or "civilization" then with Tan Liang Hong still in oz and Francis Seow in the US, is singapore out of the "dark ages"?
  
  Leaders in china are not there because they agree with the crackdown at tiananmen. They are there because china need leaders who can lead the chinese people to progress in the direction they chose. zhu, wen, hu and the new leaders are more technocrats than politicians or soldiers, for they don't need to fight a war now but to develop economic, narrow the income gap, crack down on corruptions, etc.. Is political reform on top of the priority? only if it can clearly demonstrate that it can bring about economic reform, eradicate corruptions.....The disintegration of the former USSR clearly demonstrate the opposite and one of the world's least corrupt country is a one party rule "democracy" with its founder still holding positons and exercising influences. With internet and travelling overseas, the chinese ppl know what they need, but more importantly, they know what are the priorities!
  
  Talking about power transfer, we do not see Jiang and Zhu holding on to their power till they died. When when left, we don't hear about them anymore. We don't see such power transfer in any country, let alone a big communist country.
  
  

  The changes have mainly benefited those in the cities and rather less those in the villages, in which some 900m of ChinaÂ’s population still lives. In fact the difficulty faced is to bring the economic benefits to those in the rural areas. This is getting increasing urgent for those left out of the economic boom, or worse, being made to suffer due to displacement during redevelopment, corruption and environmental degradation.

  We agree that in 30 yrs, economic development in china have benefitted 400m ppl living in the coastal area. If such progress can proceed in the same pace, then in another 60 to 70 yrs, the other 900m will also be benefitted.
  
  Indeed, the government need to take care of those who "xia gang" due to economic development, crack down on corruption and take care of the environment. No disagreement on that. It is just how we see china should do to attain that.
  
  

  We can agree that it is no easy task for 1.3 billion ppl to agree on the kind of leader. However, free and open election of leaders is, ATM, only practiced (to varying and limited extents), at the village and provincial level and certainly not at the highest levels. The root cause of the excesses of the Mao era or the blunder of the Tiananmen incident is a weak political system that is unable to avoid cult leadership and that lacks democratic moral authority, due accountability and rule of law.

  Moral credibility, rather than moral authority, together with due accountability and rule of law are necessary. But cult leadership did not come from communism alone (not that I agree with communism), Hitler was elected into power!!
  
  

  In the final analysis, to avoid similar or worse shocks in future, China urgently needs to build a much more robust political system to address real shortcomings. As long as this problem is not fundamentally redressed, significant risks remain for 1.3 billion ppl living in China as well as for ppl living in the surrounding region. The jury is out on whether the Hu/Wen leadership is able to carry out the fundamental political reforms that his predecessors have been unable to do.

  I really want to know what kind of political system can address the urgent risks of social unrest due to great income gaps, the continuing threats of flood that destroy farms and houses, and the rampnant corruption in all sectors in China.
  
  If china changes their leaders the way they did in the last 30yrs, we may see a new leaderships in another 10 yrs and I hope the new leaders could lead the country in political reform, but for now, as far as I know, the mandate of the Hu and Wen is not that of political reforms and the jury should be the people of china, not the ppl outside.
  
  
• LazerLordz

  7 Jun 05, 11:19

  I really want to know what kind of political system can address the urgent risks of social unrest due to great income gaps, the continuing threats of flood that destroy farms and houses, and the rampnant corruption in all sectors in China.

  Think of a federation.I forsee China going down that road in the next 40-50 years..it's a better way to manage such a huge society.Central control is never nimble enough to anticipate the needs and challenges of an agarian and industrial society stretched over such a huge area.
  
  Perhaps, Taiwan might consider joining this Union as a equal amongst all.
• suntze

  7 Jun 05, 16:00

  “Obviously we have very different definition of "dark ages". If china had not progressed since, it would be another North Korea, in larger scale. But is there any comparison between china in the 70s and 90s, or present china and north korea, in terms of wealth for the ppl, freedom to travel within and outside of the country.......?
  
  The details about the Ching Chong and Chen sagas are not known yet, but if such events do determine the "state of development" or "civilization"; then with Tan Liang Hong still in oz and Francis Seow in the US, is singapore out of the "dark ages"? “
  
  Perhaps I should clarify what I meant regarding China’s “dark ages”. I don’t question the fact that there has been tremendous progress. What I meant is that whilst China today has moved away from the extremes of the Mao era, the potential for blunders is still largely present. Due to the fact that the political system is still basically unchanged, there is little transparency, accountability of action and rule of law to prevent another Tiananment incident from recurring.
  
  Comparison with SporeÂ’s treatment of dissidents is not particularly helpful since Spore is not known to be a center of liberal democratic enlightenment.
  
  “Leaders in china are not there because they agree with the crackdown at tiananmen. They are there because china need leaders who can lead the chinese people to progress in the direction they chose. zhu, wen, hu and the new leaders are more technocrats than politicians or soldiers, for they don't need to fight a war now but to develop economic, narrow the income gap, crack down on corruptions, etc.. Is political reform on top of the priority? only if it can clearly demonstrate that it can bring about economic reform, eradicate corruptions.....The disintegration of the former USSR clearly demonstrate the opposite and one of the world's least corrupt country is a one party rule "democracy" with its founder still holding positons and exercising influences. With internet and travelling overseas, the chinese ppl know what they need, but more importantly, they know what are the priorities!”
  
  As mentioned earlier, Hu is on record in supporting the Tiananmen crackdown. He was in Tibet during the incident; apparently he sent a message to the CCP leadership, advocating crackdown against the dissidents.
  
  You might have the impression that I advocated glasnost ahead of perestroika. Whislt I support the robust economic reforms in China I also believe that it should also be accompanied by cautious and graduated political reforms. Unfortunately, failure of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Zhiyang to carry out earlier reforms has deterred current leaders from going in this direction. What is needed first of all is a culture of more tolerance and less of persecution.
  
  ”Talking about power transfer, we do not see Jiang and Zhu holding on to their power till they died. When when left, we don't hear about them anymore. We don't see such power transfer in any country, let alone a big communist country. “
  
  IIRC, after stepping down from the post of the Presidency, Jiang attempted to hold on to power by retaining the post of Chairmanship of the CMC. Hu Jintao had to step gingerly during the early days of transition before Jiang was eventually forced to step down by the other members of the CCP. The point is that political succession is still very much a dicey business and potential for things going in the wrong direction is still there.
  
  “I really want to know what kind of political system can address the urgent risks of social unrest due to great income gaps, the continuing threats of flood that destroy farms and houses, and the rampnant corruption in all sectors in China. “
  
  The de-facto socio-political system that is now practiced can be more appropriately called oligarchic capitalism; communism is dead. To address the problem of the rising income gap, China need to adjust towards more socialist policies; eg by improving the rights of farmers and the working class, introducing minimum standards of healthcare, housing and education, etc.
  
  Corruption has been one of the major complaints leading to the Tiananmen incident. Although there is a legal system governing issues of corruption, the problem is one of supervision, identification of corrupt officials and successful enforcement. For those interested, the following link advocates political reform in order to solve the countryÂ’s problem of unemployment, corruption and environmental degradation.
  
  http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/sandt/poll-reform.htm
  
  ”If china changes their leaders the way they did in the last 30yrs, we may see a new leaderships in another 10 yrs and I hope the new leaders could lead the country in political reform, but for now, as far as I know, the mandate of the Hu and Wen is not that of political reforms and the jury should be the people of china, not the ppl outside.”
  
  Unfortunately, the mandate for Hu/Wen is not derived from the citizens of China but from Deng and his colleagues in the CCP. At the moment, nobody really knows what the ppl really wants by way of a political system or whom they would ultimately chose to lead their nation.
  
  “Think of a federation.I forsee China going down that road in the next 40-50 years..it's a better way to manage such a huge society.Central control is never nimble enough to anticipate the needs and challenges of an agarian and industrial society stretched over such a huge area.
  
  Perhaps, Taiwan might consider joining this Union as a equal amongst all.”
  
  The idea of a federation similar to the US has been frequently advocated for continental China. There is merit in that there is leeway for more diversity and that more autonomy can be readily given to regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang. Finally if and when Taiwan chose to reunite, there will already be a successful model for reunification.
  
• sgdiehard

  7 Jun 05, 18:48

  Originally posted by LazerLordz:

  Think of a federation.I forsee China going down that road in the next 40-50 years..it's a better way to manage such a huge society.Central control is never nimble enough to anticipate the needs and challenges of an agarian and industrial society stretched over such a huge area.
  
  Perhaps, Taiwan might consider joining this Union as a equal amongst all.

  Agree. One of the important means of getting there is education, formal and informal. Majority of the chinese population have no idea what a federation is all about and many thought that the provincial governments are good enough. The older chinese are fighting hard to forget the inhumane lives they went through during cultural revolution, and they fear any kind of political changes. To them a good government is the one that give the ppl the basic necessities, "black cat or white cat, the cat that catches the rat is a good cat.".
  
  The younger generation, born in the eighties, from well to do families and are better educated, will be the force to recog with. I believe it will not take more than 50 yrs before changes take place.
  
  Will be away on holiday, will catch up on this discussion next week.
  
  Cheers.
• pearlie27

  7 Jun 05, 20:22

  Not many govt would want to admit their mistakes. But what is impt is that they don't repeat their mistakes and strive to do more good for the country. In this respect the PRC govt has done a great job. In the past 25 years its has moved 300 million people out of poverty and quadrupled the average person's income. It has to some extent dropped its ideological stand and adopted a pragmatic approach.