Grand Strategy - III The Essence of CCP

Power is not a means, it is an end.

---- O'Brien (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

(first draft)

Before I attempt to give a comprehensive analysis on the essence of the CCP, please bare in mind that there is already an alternative popular version circulating among the public called the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, published by the Falungong (FLG) organ media the Epoch Times, which was deemed to be largely a typical FLG rhetorical pamphlet aimed at demonizing the CCP in their decade long vendetta against each other. A grossly accurate description and a pastiche of caricatures of the Party (with bombastic harangues reminiscent of the ultra-leftist propagandas of the 1960's Dazibao 大字报, or "big-Character Report"), it painted an overly simplistic picture with largely sensational and not-so-objective characterizations of the CCP, with the end result turns out to be something resembles a zealous editorial series appeared on some radicalized local gazette primarily serving the exclusive readership which was already their ardent adherents. Such is actually the case of the Nine Commentaries in its initial phase anyhow. I am not discouraging any attentive readers from reading the Nine Commentaries, and frankly after having read it myself, it seems to me to be a good starting platform for the general public as a sort of preliminary antidote, and a concise rundown of the scandalous history of the Party, which is still a taboo in contemporary China to discuss. However, it is not my intention to wage another hate-campaign such as what the CCP and FLG both seem to be very good at, nor do I aim at wantonly demonizing and dehumanizing the subject at discussion and deviate from a rational and logical methodology, I am here only to offer another perspective on the same subject, and attempt to adopt an integral approach on the expatiation of the CCP's essence and its possible root cause.

To begin with the topic, a premise is necessary to be laid in order to come to a consensus with the readers. That is since China IS NOT a liberal democratic civil society, in which not a single party dictates the whole course of its national destiny, that is we cannot analyze exclusively the essence of say the democrats, or the republicans in order to beget a whole picture of the state-of-affairs in American politics, rather, American politics is as diverse as its racial composition, and its liberal spirit is as deep entrenched as its seniority in modern republicanism. On the contrary, since the China we're focusing on is really that PRC statehood established in 1949, and its supreme charter, the constitution which the CCP laid down specifically stipulates in its Article I, Section 1 that China is to be lead by the unions of workers and peasants, (a.k.a. CCP) on the basis of socialism under people's democratic dictatorship. Everything from social, educational, to political and diplomatic matters are to be solely dictated by the Party, and it is without dispute that between '49 to '79's Maoist era, it was indeed and wholeheartedly committed to be a totalitarianism; therefore, it is imperative to investigate the nature of the Party in unrelenting scrutiny before we can grasp a comprehensive diagnosis of China at large.

When we talk about the CCP, which is really composed of some 80 million cadres functioning as vital administrative organs in every level of the society and government institutions within their self-espoused Socialism with Chinese characteristics, we are really looking at a formidable organization with seemingly omnipotence to many helpless and powerless Chinese; and its sole preoccupation is the exercise and perpetuation of its hegemony and rulership, such was their political theory of the so-called "proletariat dictatorship", and now another euphemism of so-called "democratic centralism", and of course, their sole occupation goes without saying, is wei renmin fuwu 为人民服务, or literally, service for the people, one of the most celebrated quote of Mao popularized during the Maoist era. Nevertheless, to any thinking person in China today, it is an open secret that while there might be a minority of cadres scattered in some remote locations here and there whose sincerity for such aim are really beyond any reasonable doubt, and whose altruistic dedication are reckoned to be that of the highest honor of humanity, they're nothing but a few glimmering stars in the whole gloomy and cloudy night sky, their deeds are insignificant, their powers are always checked, hampered, or even deprived of by the more numerous hardliners. In reality, the Party serves no one but itself by constantly cheating the people in every possible treacherous manner so that any sort of improvement on the people's livelihood is to be merited as the Party's magnanimity and compassion, however, if one is to stop and think with his own mind for one second, it isn't hard for him to see that the fruit of his fortune was really the result of his sweat and industry, and that the Party's role was only to interfere with the people's lives whenever they felt like a whimsical campaign or political movement were needed in order to meet the Party's interest by evoking the people's primitive patriotism. Such is de facto the state-of-affairs in China throughout the CCP regime since 1949, and the only reason as to the economical boom since 1979's Deng's era is because the Party let go their clutches and left the people alone for a period of time so that we've seen some nascent social, cultural, and economical blossoming; however one should not be fooled by the ostensible fanfare, for whenever the Party's minutest interest seems to be compromised, such as the 6-4 Incident, FLG persecution campaign, regional unrests, or civil confrontations, etc., then the claws of the Party will show absolutely no mercy at its subjects as we have already witnessed.

To grasp a comprehensive picture of the Party, whose own fate and destiny seems to be so intertwined with that of the whole Chinese nation in modern era, we have to differentiate them into the following three categories in order to beget a general understanding as to their origin, their moral outlook, as well as their spiritual disposition. Namely, they can be classified into the paleocommunists pre-1949, the mesocommunists 1949-1979, and the neocommunists post-1979. (The dates next to the seemingly novel nomenclatures are to be served as a rough guideline in the context of history, and are by no means a clean cut definite dividing line.) As we know, the whole global leftist movement was born in the west as sort of a byproduct of the Industrial Revolution, Capitalism, and the whole rise of modern nation-states, and it has already had a considerable influence since the 19th century, with the revolution of 1848 in Europe, the Communist Manifesto published in the same year, the first and second International in 1864 and 1889 respectively, the Paris Commune in 1871, the founding of the Soviet regime in 1917, and finally, the third International, a.k.a. Comintern in 1919. All of which has had a far reaching impact in terms of History than their initial appearances.

But the importation of the whole leftist movement into China half a globe away was initially belated and languid, and its reception by the people lukewarm. The CCP was historically consecrated with its founding date on July 1st, 1921, a national holiday every year in PRC today, nevertheless its real occurrence was wretchedly deplorable, with 11 members gathered furtively in a building in the Shanghai French Concession, it was still aborted due to interception by the police and later took place on a sampan off of a lake south of Shanghai. It wasn't until Mr. Sun Yat-sun's unholy alliance with the Comintern in order to obtain its funds and support to found a military school in Whampoa 黄埔, Canton Province in 1924 with a prerequisite of allowing the CCP to be embedded amongst them that a prominent generation of the Chinese leftists started to emerge in history. These committed Marx-Leninists of the pre-1949 era are to be designated as the paleocommunists for the convenience of this discourse. Some of them became the future alpha-males after the founding of PRC or nominal figureheads and martyrs to be recited and memorized in school text books, many got sacked amidst waves of political movements that the Party so adept at, and more, like my docile and loyal grandparents who are true nonagenarian paleos, got sacked and rehabilitated time after time, and largely became the Party's avatars as a symbol of its own seniority and longevity, and to be alloted with a respectable pension for their final years from the neocommunists, who are all together utterly a whole new breed.

The paleocommunists of China were quite an idiosyncratic breed of offshoots from the international Communism. While they did shared much in common with the ideology of the Marx-Leninist doctrine, and later took great pains trying to emulate the behemoth Stalinist system, their moral structure could be described as somewhat Utopian due to the decentralized and frankly, chaotic state of affairs China was in during the first half of 20th century. Following the classic tradition of Marxist dialectics, they were an extremely progressive rarity of their era, who affirmed that the Chinese traditional value and custom as a hindrance, if not outright evil, to the rise of China towards a socialist paradise dictated by the exclusive authority of the proletariat or simply the have-not, the vast majority of the Chinese populace. Even though the proletariat in the original sense according to the Western Marx-Leninist meant the disenfranchised urban workers who crammed in the filthy slums and ghettos, the urban workers in China at the time were fairly thin in terms of occupational density of the whole nation, therefore it was Mao, a rather unique paleocommunist, who possessed an intuitive understanding of the Chinese nature and her history, incorporated the massive peasantry into the great proletariat army, because China was in fact by and large an agrarian society which required the majority of the populace preoccupied in the agricultural industry, and it was precisely the peasantry, in every turn of historical turbulence as Mao would surely acquiesced, who waged devastating revolts and riots which were more than often the coup de grace of the final downfall of a dynasty. Even though the Chinese peasantry itself is a complicated structure with its hundreds of millions strong members, and could be divided into the upper, middle, and lower classes, the subject of which required another sino-sociologist to investigate, they are nevertheless easily influenced by the sway of any whimsical daredevil demagogue, and they generally lacked the qualities of sophisticated intellect and a definitive objective. Thus, the destructive power of the peasantry played well into the hands of the leadership in the paleocommunists in the building of the great socialist paradise known as PRC, notwithstanding their ruthless exploitation afterwards by the fanatical mesocommunists in their so-called People's Communes.

The mesocommunists were the generic terms defining the new breed of cadres of CCP during the Maoist totalitarian era (1949-1979). They had been radicalized and wholeheartedly indoctrinated by the authoritative Maoist ideology who upheld the Führer prinzip with the utmost faithfulness. They carried out missions and execute orders with the minutest details and exacting precision even it meant great personal sacrifices and physical and emotional pains. Since 1949, they are the nuts and bolts who were the actual machinery to carry out numerous political campaigns of the Maoist Era in the names of the Party and the construction of a socialist paradise. Paradise it may appeared to be for these cadres, but it was a communist living hell for the Chinese people indeed. The havocs they wreaked were beyond anyone's possible imagination: they killed most of their political enemies as the Bolsheviks did; liquidated most of their class enemies in the name of Land Reform, the rest of them were sent to Laogai 劳改, the Chinese version of the Gulag; they carried out numerous political campaigns such as the Three-antis三反 and Five-antis五反 (1951-1952) under the guises of Party purities and anti-corruptions they rooted out those cacophonous elements; following the great helmsman chairman Mao's direction they carried out the anti-right campaign (1957-1959) which brought disasters to millions of people; during the infamous Great Leap Forward (1958-1961), a series of radical socio-economic policies, they were the ones who're responsible for tens of millions of starvation death tolls by "collectivizing" harvests and crops, (the real usage of which were substituted as hard currency, the authentic bill of exchange the Communists had got in order to obtain Soviet weaponry including the atomic bombs, which they did managed to explode one in 1964;) the depletion of food was then conveniently designated as the "three years of natural disaster"; (for the detail of this period conferred Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine by Jasper Becker) and finally, following Mao's private revenge because he's got some beef with some members of the leadership, they were the ones carried out the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), whose euphemism was known as shinian haojie 十年浩劫, or literally, ten years of catastrophe. During all of this period, they launched innumerable pidou dahu 批斗大会, or literally, censure and denouncement congregations, which brought any enemies of the Party, including its own former member, the most famous one being Liu Shaoqi 刘少奇 once the president of PRC and the beta-male amongst the paleocommunists, in the most vicious and humiliating public shame one can possibly imagine. In a nutshell, the mesocommunists were a group of most ruthless and dehumanizing hardcore CCP cadres, and very unfortunately, since the passing of Deng Xiaoping's era and in their approaching seniority, they became the alphas of all central and regional leadership in today's PRC.

Just below their rank are their most sycophantic and corrupted lieutenants, the neocommunists, the poster-child of a whole new rainbow leadership of the Reform and Open era launched by their most revered and almighty granddaddy the paleocommunist Deng Xiaoping. This group of wine-sipping, suit-donning, English-babbling (back in the old days the mesos wore Mao-suit and spoke Russian) Party cadres were the new mandarins the Westerners have to deal with, much like a hundred years ago during the Qing Dynasty. But for the sake of CCP political correctness, back then it was imperialism with unequal treaties, today it is "socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics". Except perfunctory Party rituals and placing their sacred progenitor, without whom there won't be them, the talismanic Mao on the Forbidding City in Beijing, they could be said as the most unlikely "communist" according to a true "communist", albeit they still call themselves one. It could be rationally deduced that their sole preoccupation are not ideology and certainly not communism, but the very existence and maintenance of Power qua power in the name of "socialism with Chinese characteristics", a.k.a. "dictatorship with Chinese authoritarian tradition" to any thinking person. While they're at it, and in the good old tradition of Chinese idiom, three years of honest governance, a hundred thousand snowflake silver 三年清知府，十万雪花银, they cheated, cajoled, bribed, lied, sent their kids to the West while denouncing the West in public, and last but not least, exploited the people to the hilt. Nominally, they took all the credits for the "rise of China", but what really happened was that they simply rode atop this big wave of unprecedented economic freedom and took all the wanton licenses to reap the cream of the crop; they are the nouveau riches who live like aristocrats but called themselves successors of the great revolutionary proletariats; they act as overlords but called themselves servants of the people; they practice cronyism and nepotism but promised to prosecute any unlawful behavior in the government; they exercise outright dictatorship but brandish their form of government the "new democracy" ("old democracy" is of course the now defunct capitalist parliamentarianism according to Mao). In short, the opportunistic and hypocritical neocommunists are a combination of the worst vices in the Chinese society with the worst political practice came out of the West.

The above synopsis provided us with a general picture of just what the Party is all about: it is therefore plausible to construe that the Party was inspired in Marx-Leninism, practiced in Stalin-Maoism, and ended up in a chimera-like egregious behemoth of je ne sais quoi. For more than three decades it was a wholeheartedly committed draconian-spartan totalitarianism, and since Mao's demise and Deng's accession, it opted for a revisionist capitalist road resulted in the current desperate state we're in today, for which the Party headed by that archetypal mesocommunist president Hu Jingtao, christened the era with a miraculous name, the Harmonious Society. It is nevertheless, only a facade on that post-modern spectacle called television that a thin vein of economic booming and financial success was transmitted much like the loudspeaker in the old days as a means of propaganda. Beneath that, everything is still under the firm authority of the Party's loyal commissars: the medias, internet, schools, factories, churches, banks, temples, corporations, and of course all of the omnipotent government institutions. The private enterprises and spontaneous associations are in reality, nothing but a comic dwarf entertaining the international arena while Mr. Goliath calls all the shots back in the shadow. The inconvenient truth is still a nolens volens truth, to wit, Big Brother is still watching you, every step of the way.

As we know, the entire communist global enterprise was the major global political movement of the whole 20th century, it saw its heydays in the Soviet empire during the Cold War, but as it collapsed in 1991, so passed the Utopian dream of the proletariat paradise. Today, we saw the remaining camps of the remnant communist regimes stood lonesome, and pitiful, scattered around the world in Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, and the revisionist Red China. Their goals were no longer like that of their progenitors the paleocommunists, who sought for prosperity for the deprived and the disenfranchised proletariats by usurping the bourgeoisie and staging coup d'etat, but simply to keep them in power, as O'Brien, the elite party cadre in Owell's Nineteen Eighty-Four brilliantly put it: Power is not a means, it is an end. Therefore, it isn't hard for one to see that the emperor wears no clothes, it just takes awful lot of courage to say it out loud, especially that the emperor does not like to hear he wears no clothes and threatens to use brute punishment to anyone who dares. There we face an abysmal dilemma and a seemingly unsurmountable plight which the contemporary Chinese found themselves in, they crave for political reforms but does not dare to say it out loud, they long for freedom and civil rights but see no hope, so they clash with authorities head on when grave injustice had been done but all that entails is a ruthless crackdown. In the next chapter we shall examine this harsh reality in details in order to further our quest for the salvation of China.

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