July 18, 2007
IN A REPUBLIC YOU COMPROMISE WITH FELLOW CITIZENS, IN A PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC WITH REALITY:
Legacy Of a Maoist Injustice (Perry Link, July 18, 2007, Washington Post)
In 1957, the "rightists" were largely intellectuals: writers, journalists, editors, doctors, professors, students and liberal-minded officials. In fact, they were almost all idealistic socialists, eager to make such slogans as "serve the people" into living realities. They criticized abuses of power but, with rare exception, were only trying to help the new "People's Republic" by their criticism. The eminent Chinese journalist Liu Binyan, labeled a "major rightist" in 1957, later recalled his surprise at the charges that had been leveled against him. He felt innocent on every count, but on the other hand, "How could Mao be wrong? There must be something in me that I still need to dig out and examine."Soon thereafter Liu -- whose story is typical of many -- was publicly humiliated, separated from his family and sent to labor in a remote, poverty-stricken village. There he had an epiphany. He came to see "two kinds of truth" in China: the "truths" of communism, which descended from the Propaganda Department and infused newspapers at all levels, and truths that emerged from the ground up, out of the hard life of the farmers in the poor village. The "two truths" seemed unrelated.
This separation of formal political language from the language of daily life was a recurrent theme at the 50th-anniversary conferences. [...]
Hypocrisy is, of course, not unique to China; nor did Mao Zedong invent the Chinese version of it. And the post-Mao leadership has done much to create the current values crisis by telling the Chinese people that so long as they remain politically docile, they are free to make money just about any way they like.
Still, the cynicism that permeates China seems in important ways traceable to the "two truths" problem that emerged under Mao. In the words of one "1957 rightist" at UC-Irvine, "Mao stole social idealism from us, and we have never regained it."
Thus the fascinating recent comment by Qiu Xiaolong, that he doesn't particularly like his own Inspector Chen, due to the compromises even a decent man like Chen must make to function within such a system.
In a political system such as China's, there are two great tragedies.
One tragedy, of course, is the ocean of blood shed senselessly in the worship of a false god.
The other tragedy is the kind of men produced by the system. Under it, the Chinese learned and continue to learn to lie or to believe in lies or to lie to themselves. What is as tragic as the slavery of the body is the slavery of the mind. It is something that no amount of economic development can ever justify.
The Communist regime owes the Chinese people a debt it can never repay.
Posted by: X at July 18, 2007 10:39 AMLet us turn to a rectification of names. Look at "peoples' republic"--a childish redundancy.
It means the "peoples' peoples' matter" from the Latin, respublica.
What could be sillier? Well how about this: "democratic peoples' republic," meaning the peoples' peoples' power and peoples' matter, throwing in the Greek, Demokratia.
Why point this out? Is not this one more schooteacher's quibble? No. Rather it is evidence of the cynical sham and fraud that is Communism. Sure, all for the "people," except that, as Orwell, nailed it in Animal Farm, the pigs running the place seem to be the ones making out. Here the pigs just keep repeating the lie that they are "serving the people" again and again, hoping that someone will believe thim.
There is only one kind of good Communist, whether the place is Spain, America or China.
Posted by: Lou Gots at July 19, 2007 3:44 AM