Let me explain what I mean by saying that I hated the China I left behind but am not sure I like it better now. Recently the author of the bestselling book "Life and Death in Shanghai,” Nien Cheng has passed away. During an interview, she was asked if she would go back to China, she said, "I won't go back to China as long as Mao's portrait is still hung up there at Tiananmen Square." I fully understand why Cheng put it this way. First of all, to me it is a symbol, an intolerable insult to millions of innocent Chinese who have been persecuted, tortured, and killed during the CR and other political movements since 1949. It tells people the current rulers are not serious about the atrocities the Communist Party has committed since 1949, especially during CR. They don't care about the Holocaust Chinese people suffered in Mao and his like's hands. Instead, they tried to nurture collective amnesia in the younger generation by stirring up the dangerous nationalistic enthusiasm.
The reason why the communists were able to defeat the KMT government and come to power in 1949 is because they presented themselves to the Chinese as the standard-bearer of democracy and, at the same time, the KMT government was such a totalitarian and corrupted government that President Truman called them "thieves" because they stole about 1/5 of US financial aides to China during WWII and they invested some of the money back in US for their own good. However, compared with today's communist officials' corruption, the KMT government's embezzlement was nothing. Today, 90% of Chinese billionnairs are children of high-ranking officials. It has been years since the public opinion called for officials to open their asset records. Those voices just hit the stonewall. The exposure of their asset records would certainly arouse people's anger because people can easily trace their money back to their power.
Talking about democracy, recently, human rights activist Feng Zhenghu has been camping at Tokyo's Norita Airport for more than three weeks because Chinese government doesn't want people who know laws like him to be back in China to protect the powerless people or expose their violation of justice. It is an international disgrace to the Chinese government to refuse its own citizen with a valid passport to reenter China after traveling abroad. It is really an irony because, during Mao's time, whoever tried to escape China would have been jailed or killed under the label of "attempting to surrender to and serve the state's enemy" while today the Chinese rulers would rather send them out of the country in hopes that they could have fewer trouble-makers back home even though that is in violation of Chinese and international laws. They have been trying very hard to muffle voices for justice and democracy. They tried to convince people that the Communist Party is trying to create a so-called cordial society
but in fact they are polarizing the society further and further. Look at the China's records of human rights in the past decade, they are worsening instead of getting better. They rely on police forces to maintain their rule. Is there any other countries in the world which ban kitchenware stores from selling kitchen knives during their national day celebration? They don't have confidence in themselves. The communist officials let their children live in American and other Western countries.
It was Mao's intention that Liu Shaoqi was being tortured and eventually let die inhumanly and his wife Wang Guangmei was also tortured, jailed for years and almost killed during the CR. Surprisingly after Wang Guangmei was released, she called herself a "student of Chairman Mao." So did many other communist leaders and officials who were persecuted during the CR. I realize how unreliable the current so-called stability is! After Mao's death, even though they may complain about him in private, the communist leaders still need to keep him in the shrine for their own good to show the legitimacy of their rule now that they are in power. If we are satisfied with the status guo, we are actually waiting for someone among the communists to acquire his/her personal power and dominate the absolute authority in their party and then in the state. By then, we will have a second Mao and China will repeat this tragic history again because we don't have the weapon of democracy to fight him/her.
Let me tell you one of my experiences in Shanghai several weeks ago. One day I tried to look for the studio of an artist I knew in one of the best residential areas in Shanghai. The artist's name is Ha Ding (sounds like Hardin in English) who was my teacher. He was well-known in Shanghai before CR. Unfortunately, the house was gone, which I thought was understandable after so many years. The strange thing was that now the whole block was surrounded by a tall solid concrete wall about 8 feet. What's more, on top of the concrete wall, there was another bamboo fence about 8 feet, too. I was puzzled why someone would do something like that. It was ugly. Obviously it is not a jail, not in Shanghai's most expensive residential area. Through the cracks in closely knitted bamboo fence, I could see a modern mansion in there. At its iron-cast gate, there was a guard in PLA uniform. The gate was clearly electronically controlled. Out of curiosity, I went across the street and asked the guard who lived in this place. The guard pulled a long face and told me: "It is the nation's secret. I can't tell you." I said, "That used to be the site of my teacher's house," but the guard repeated what he said, "Still I can't tell you." So I went to see my friend who used to go to the studio with me and is now a well-known illustrating artist. He told me that Ha Ding and his family were kicked out of his house at the beginning of the CR. He could not make a living by teaching, publishing, or selling his art any more. He was labeled as a bourgeois artist. My friend told me that the artist suffered a lot and once he saw him working at a construction site. I was told that years after CR, he went to America and later died. I asked my friend who is living in the mansion there now. He answered that people say it is Jiang Zeming after he retired from the top leading position. Or maybe some people like him, definitely not people like "you and me." I felt I could have yelled at the guard if I had known it was Jiang. It made me so angry.
I am not saying I can't be forgiving. I may forgive only on condition that those who committed crimes really feel remorseful and apologize convincingly for what they did. I will never forgive those who still take advantage of their privileged position in unequal competition and came to this country to become a capitalist living in Park Ave. apartment, NYC and making light of their beating up or killing people during the CR or those who feel that they were wrongfully blamed because they became a symbol during the CR. Let me ask: What kind of Red Guard would have been elected as their leader and represented them to put an arm band around Mao's arm three days after they cruelly tortured and cold-bloodedly killed their own teachers? Ask those who were Red Guards during the CR. They would have killed more innocent teachers if they had been allowed to replace her in the leading position. They are just extension of China in this country!
Talking about "socialism with Chinese characteristics," to me the communist rule is offspring of more Chinese traditional ideology than Marxism. Comparatively speaking, maybe only North Korea or Pol Pot are/were as authoritarian and inhuman as Chinese Communist Party. Mao was a typical feudalistic dynasty, an emperor without the title. The Chinese Communists started with posing being anti-Confucianist and end up upholding Confucianism as their last straw. That's why the regime is full of Chinese characteristics. You may find most references of its power structure in Chinese history. You'll be amazed at how innovative our ancestors were in invention of torturing and killing kits in our history. By selling slave labor, China has built up a facade of prosperity which is, to a certain extent, quite deceptive, or at least satisfying to low-self-concepted people who have been demoralized by China's humiliated history since 1840. Without democracy, I don't think China can get anywhere. The bottleneck is around the corner. That's how I view it.
Wang Yi
