The Party Empire: Saga of a Nightmare

By H. Yuan Tien

All peoples have their share of brutal rulers. The longer their history, the more numerous such notorious rulers they have inevitably witnessed, and the greater the diversity of their pitiless behavior. Chinas encounter with such ordeals began in antiquity and continues into the modern era.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503535558

H. Yuan Tien

H. Yuan Tien, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, The Ohio State University, has since retirement devoted himself to literature: Blue Seas, Mulberry Fields; You Just Never Know: Tales from Contemporary China; Party Empire

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I

The Contemporary Scene

S ONG JIANG and his Gang of 108 heroes were applauded by Chairman Mao Zedong at various Party meetings during the 1970s. Mao’s assessment of the Hoods of the Delta Margins , however, did not comprise a critique of the novel’s literary merit. The weight of the volume , he categorically stressed on August 14, 1975, lay in its political salience: "the significance of The Hoods of the Delta Margins rests precisely in its ‘surrender’ closure, Mao said. Song Jiang, he continued, was a representative of ‘Revisionism.’ It’s a negative example with which to let all people be aware of who belong to the ‘surrender’ clique (at pre sent)."

The controversy centered on Revisionism has long existed in China. Within the Communist Party of China (the CPC), as early as March, 1957, in his How to Correctly Handle Contradictions among the People, Mao stressed the need to be on guard against the return of capitalism (or, later, Capitalist-Roaders). He further denounced Revisionism in January, 1962, labeling its possible resurgence as a return of capitalism, the nastiest - or Fascist – type of capitalism. (See Chapter Dreaming of Unity through Division later in this volume).

Mao himself passed away two decades later. By that time, China’s 10 Marshals honored for their military roles in the Civil War era had already nearly all died under normal or sad circumstances. All of them had stood alongside Mao on Tiananmen Square on October 1st, 1949, when Mao declared: The Chinese People have stood up.

After Mao’s death, there emerged two sides on the issue of his legacy in Chinese history. Deng Xiaoping (8. 22, 1904 ~ 2. 19, 1997), the last major figure then remaining from the Civil War years, recalled this intra-party cleavage more than a decade before his own passing.

In July, 1986, at a meeting of the Politburo of the CPC in Beidaihe, a seaside resort area not far from Beijing, Deng admitted that we are all aware of the fact that Chairman Mao concentrated all Party, political, and military powers into his own hands, … … but that Mao’s strategy for this expansion, the steps to expand the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and the objectives to be achieved, were unknown to most of us. Even Premier Zhou didn’t know. … … Our Party has now totally repudiated the Cultural Revolution, and deemed it a Holocaust. … … But the matter of how to pass judgment on Mao Zedong himself remains controversial. There are numerous reasons for this impasse. It is necessary to render an eventual judgment on Mao, but let 15 years - or twenty years - pass first, when the time would be ripe.

Deng recalled the matter again on January 15, 1993, and allowed that the 1986 vote on delaying judgment on Mao owed to the circumstances inside the Party and in the then national situation. Many comrades accepted that reluctantly, he said. But history is what we created and cannot be turned upside down or altered.

On the matter of Mao’s deeds and misdeeds, there have always been disputes. Deng Xiaoping told Comrades Peng Zhen, Tan Zhenlin, and Lu Dingyi that their opinion was correct, but that "the matter should be set aside for a while (further) and there is need to take into account the current situation – (when stability is of utmost importance). It can be postponed until the next century, and to let the next generation render a thorough verdict. Mao Zedong’s deeds and mistakes are all on display, cannot be removed, and cannot be altered.

There are those who worry that a full appraisal of Mao could lead to the discredit of the Chinese Communist Party’s historical accomplishments and damage the leadership role of the Communist Party. In my view, Deng concluded, we need not worry. I suggest that a thorough assessment of Mao’s life can be rendered after the passing of our generation. By then, political feelings can be more at ease and stubborn views fewer …"

All that had been said more than twenty years ago (that is, 1993), and all the leading figures of that and earlier eras have passed. To put it more straight-forwardly, all the principal figures of the founding generation of the PRC are gone. The time has clearly and surely arrived for an all-out verdict on Mao Zedong.

II

The Ten Glorious Years

O CTOBER 1 ST , 1950.

This date marked the first anniversary of the proclamation that brought the People’s Republic of China (the PRC) into existence. On May 1st, Mao Zedong himself had added Long Live Chairman Mao! to the list of slogans issued on the eve of that significant date. He’d inserted it in his own hand-writing.

This is mystifying, if not astonishing and riveting. What had occurred during the previous twelve months that inspired a slogan advocating nothing less than the resurrection of feudalism?! Was there a movement afoot to restore the imperial throne? Would the people of China once again be compelled to shout: Long Live the Emperor!?

Just what had been going on?

This retrogressive development is partly explicable, if not excusable, in terms of the fast-moving national politics of the time.

A year earlier (1949) when the People’s Republic had just been established, Mao Zedong was a newcomer in the Beijing arena. The Common Program ( 43398.png ), the provisional Constitution, grew out of negotiations with the various political parties on the national scene at the time. The newly formed central government included major figures from the Kuomintang era as well as from such parties as the September-3 Society and the Democratic League. Huang Yanpei ( 43401.png ) was one of the League’s founders. Liang Shuming ( 43403.png ) was another, along with Xu Deya ( 43405.png ), Zhang Bojun ( 43407.png ), and Zhang Naiqi ( 43409.png ). Also participating in the coalition government were General Fu Zuoyi ( 43411.png 43412.png ), formerly of the Nationalist (Kuomintang) army, and Shao Lizi 43416.png 43417.png 1882 ~ 1967 43420.png , an elder statesman and a founder of the CPC in 1920, who had left the party in 1926, later held high positions in the Nationalist regime, and advocated in 1949 the formation of a coalition government between the Kuomintang and the CPC.

Their political status and diversity in backgrounds underscored the fact that the new regime was a Coalition Government, albeit with Mao Zedong and the CPC occupying the leading role.

In the course of drafting the Common Programs, a number of major concessions were made to the groups outside the CPC. The preliminary draft included the clause that freedom of person ( 43422.png ) is the most fundamental liberty. But this noble and noteworthy clause disappeared from the initial formal draft of the Common Program of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Various delegates objected to this omission. On September 5, Zhou Enlai reinserted it in the re-revised version for eventual adoption. This episode could not have happened without Mao’s being the mastermind and acquiescence.

All this give-and-take was an obvious indication that Mao Zedong’s claim to supreme authority had not yet been fully established at the time when the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949. Indeed, the first time the slogan Long Live Chairman Mao! was ever uttered by a notable person in public dated only months prior to October 1, l950.

This first time, evidently, occurred in March of 1949, at the end of a banquet given by Ye Jianying ( 43427.png ), who was later honored as one of the Ten Marshals of China. Huang Yanpei ( 43429.png 43430.png , 1878 - 1965) reportedly shouted out: Long Live the People’s Revolution! Long Live the Chinese Communist Party! Long Live Chairman Mao!

A founder of the Democratic League, Huang Yanpei was the honored guest on that occasion hosted by Ye Jianying. That last slogan, nevertheless, was nowhere to be seen or heard on October 1, 1949, when Mao Zedong proclaimed on Tiananmen Square: The Chinese People Have Stood Up!

The following October, Mao evidently had made headway in elevating and consolidating his position in Beijing. With a raised fist, he openly exhorted all to follow his lead in hailing the slogan: Long Live Chairman Mao!

What a difference a year had made!

After the adoption of the Common Programs, Huang Yanpei joined the government as the Minister of Light Industry. Huang, a well-known scholar of literature, had no familiarity with engineering and science. His elevation was a purely political appointment which occurred even though he’d never sought office throughout his scholarly career. He was merely one of the untold numbers of patriots of all persuasions who’d joined in the struggle to rebuild China from the bottom up.

What led to Huang’s public hailing of Mao Zedong stemmed evidently from how Mao had impressed him at their first meeting in Yan’an in 1945 when Mao reportedly declared that democracy offered a new path to rebuilding the country. Huang had been much taken with this announcement by Mao Zedong that a new way had been found to supplant the cyclic rise and fall of feudal dynasties under despotic rulers like Jie and Yin. This new way, Mao had said, is democracy.

Similarly, earlier in 1944, Mao Zedong had declared to a visiting official American delegation to Yan’an: The American people are the best friends of the Chinese people. The goal of Our Party’s struggle is to overthrow the reactionary clique of the dictatorial Nationalist party, to establish an American-style democracy, to enable the people of the whole nation to enjoy the fortune that democracy brings.

All this transpired in the waning days of the War of Resistance against Japan, when the rise of other inspirational possibilities, as well, imbued hope in the people of a war-weary country.

****************

The sci-fi tale, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) depicts a well-known fictional scientist who, through swallowing an experimental potion, induces in himself an evil-vs-good split-personality whose evil alter-ego proves to be that of a homicidal maniac. As it happens, more than a century earlier the Chinese writer Li Ruzhen (1763 ~ 1830) cautioned his readers in his renowned travelogue, Mirages in the Mirror ( 43433.png ), to guard against victimization by just such double-faced – or Janus-faced - persons.

The two main characters of the Mirages in the Mirror, Tang Ao and Lin Zhiyang, visited numerous fictional nations. In their rush to hit the road one day, they inadvertently left some personal items behind. Only after arriving at their destination – Liangmianguo ( 43435.png ): Double-Faced Nation - did they discover they had between them only two sets of clothing: a luxurious silk suit and a coarse cotton outfit.

All the gentlemen there wore a soft mantle that covered the back of their heads. One man greeted Tang Ao, who was dressed in a silk suit, with all cordiality and broad smiles. When Lin Zhiyang, garbed in the cheap coarse cotton outfit, ventured to join the conversation, the man looked at him and instantly turned cold and rude. … …

Taken aback by their interlocutor’s startling change of face, Tang Ao and Lin Zhiyang instantly took their leave. They exchanged their clothing and re-approached the man, who responded cordially and warmly toward Lin in the silk outfit, but cold-shouldered Tang Ao. As Lin continued conversing with the man, Tang Ao slipped quietly behind him and surreptitiously lifted the soft mantle covering the backside of his head. To Tang Ao’s utter shock, hidden behind the shroud was a frightful mien that featured mouse-eyes, a hawk-nose, a wrinkled brow, a face of dark blue studded with fang-like teeth, a long forked tongue like that of a snake, and a mouth dripping with blood and emanating poisonous air.

Unbeknownst to himself, this local gentleman’s true self had been revealed. Doubtless he wondered why Tang and Lin suddenly dashed away

Indeed, they escaped on the double from the Double-Faced Nation … …

Thereupon, Li Ruzhen, the author of Mirages in the Mirror, counseled them with all sincerity. Such strange things are common in life, he said, and shouldn’t occasion surprise. You two … are lucky to have discovered your peril in time and to have escaped without suffering ghastly consequences. From now on, you both should be on guard at all times to avoid encountering similar shocks.

**********

There was, of course, no escape from the evolving circumstances in the years immediately following the first anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic.

On March 12, 1957, in a public debate between Liang Shuming ( 43437.png , 10. 18, 1893 ~ 6. 23, 1988) and Mao Zedong, Liang attempted to gauge the tolerance of the Communist Party, or rather that of Mao Zedong himself. In that attempt, Liang was shouted off the stage. Years later, he gave his personal assessment of the Chairman: Mao Zedong is not just one Mao Zedong, but several Mao Zedongs. There are many sides to Mao Zedong. He is inventive, complicated, and changeable.

In plainer English: a modern Machiavelli (schemer) in a Mao-jacket. (More of Liang’s view of Mao and his other exchanges with him will be detailed later in this volume.)

**********

By that time, Liang had – years earlier - already been ousted from the government along with all the others who were members of various minor political parties, such as Huang Yanpei.

All this should occasion no surprise. Choruses cheering Long Live Chairman Mao! filled the air after 1950. In Qin Shihuang’s day over two millennia prior, all powers had been concentrated in the person of the Emperor. Now under Mao, one-party dictatorship ( 43439.png - that is: the Dictatorship of the Proletariat ( 43442.png ) – had gained the upper hand.

Unification of thought ( 43444.png ) emerged at the top of the agenda. But burning books and entombing scholars - as had occurred under Emperor Qin - would indeed be an anachronistic measure of abhorrent proportions. Far less repugnant, but more subtle ways existed in abundance. Besides, there were numerous individuals jockeying for attention and positions who were willing and eager to partake in the task of implementing thought unification. Mao, at the head of this drive, awed the many ambitious and able Party cadres into implementing his thought unification schema not only in Beijing but also across the country.