Chapter 89 Chapter 16 The Fall of Socialism 1

1 In the 1970s, there was a socialist country that was particularly worried about its rather inferior economic backwardness.Regardless of other reasons, it is very anxious to see that Japan, which is next to it, turns out to be the most brilliant and brilliant example of successful capitalism.In fact, communism in China can never be regarded as a branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and it is even lighter as a member of the Soviet satellite group.That is to say, from one point of view, China's population is far larger than that of the Soviet Union, and in fact it is larger than that of any other country in the world.The actual number of people in China may not be certain, but it is generally estimated that one out of every five people on the planet lives in China (a large number of Chinese immigrants also immigrate to East Asia and Southeast Asia).What's more, not only is China far more ethnically homogeneous than many other countries—94 percent of the population is Han—and, as a single political entity (albeit with occasional breaks), it may be at least two thousand years old. Long.More importantly, during most of the two thousand years of the Chinese Empire, and in the minds of most Chinese who cared about world affairs, China was the center and model of world civilization.Conversely, in all other countries that have been triumphantly ruled by communist regimes, with very few exceptions, starting with the Soviet Union, they are considered cultural borderlands, barren lands that are obviously backward compared to the centers of advanced civilization.Why the Soviet Union in Stalin’s era screamed loudly, repeatedly emphasizing that it does not need to rely on Western knowledge and technology, and vigorously insisting on independent research and development of all advanced innovations from telephones to airplanes is an obvious expression of its mentality that it thinks it is inferior.

But China doesn't think so.It believes—quite correctly—that its own classical civilization, art and writing, as well as its social value system, are objects of spiritual inspiration and imitation recognized by other countries, and Japan is especially grateful to Fukasawa.Such a culturally rich country, no matter from a collective point of view or in terms of individual status compared with any other nation, naturally has no sense of inferiority in intellectual and cultural inferiority.And none of the neighboring countries around China can pose the slightest threat to it; in addition, China invented gunpowder, so it can rest easy and easily keep the barbarians who violated the border.As a result, the Chinese people's sense of superiority was further affirmed, although this mentality once caught them off guard when faced with the expansion of Western empires. In the 19th century, China's backwardness in science and technology became more and more obvious-because technology was inferior to human beings, it was directly manifested as inferior to human beings in military affairs.However, this backward phenomenon is not actually due to the incompetence of Chinese people in terms of technology or education. The root cause is the self-sufficiency and self-confidence of traditional Chinese civilization.Therefore, the Chinese are hesitant to take action, and they are unwilling to jump into the sea of ​​"modernization" of comprehensive Europeanization like Japan did in 1868 when it carried out the Meiji Restoration.Because all this can only be realized when the defender of the ancient civilization - the ancient Chinese Empire - is in ruins; only through the social revolution, in the cultural revolution that is also the downfall of the Confucian system, can it really unfold.

The Communist Party of China, therefore, has both a socialist nature and a nationalist temperament - I hope this word will not be suspected of answering a question.The explosives that ignite the torch of communism are the extreme poverty and oppression of the Chinese people.First, the labor masses (Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong) in the imperialist concessions (sometimes without losing modern industry) in the large cities on the south-central coast (Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong), and later joined by small farmers who accounted for 90% of China's population.The situation of Chinese peasants is even worse than that of the urban population, whose average consumption is more than two and a half times that of the former.The poverty of China is hard for Western readers to imagine.When the Communist Party came to power (according to 1952 data), the average Chinese had only half a kilogram of grain per day to make ends meet, and only less than one kilogram of tea per year to enjoy.As for his or her feet, there is only one new pair of shoes on the feet every five years (China Statistics, 1989, Tables 31, 15.2, 15.5).

The national character of Chinese communism is transmitted through the blood of the upper and middle intellectuals, who provided most of the leadership talents for the Chinese political movement in the 20th century.And its national character is also transmitted through the mood that the Chinese people generally feel.The Chinese people believe that those batches of barbaric foreign devils are of no benefit to the individual Chinese who have had contact with them, or to China as a whole.Since the mid-19th century, China has been attacked by every foreign power within its power, defeated by them, divided up by them, and exploited by them;Long before the fall of the feudal dynasty, China had launched several anti-imperialist movements with traditional ideology, such as the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.The CCP’s resistance to Japan was undoubtedly a critical moment for the CCP to turn around, making it transform from a source of social chaos that had been seen as a collapse (that is, the position the party was in in the 1930s) to become the leader and representative of the entire Chinese people.At the same time, the Communist Party called for the social liberation of the poor people in China, which naturally made its political goal of liberating and rejuvenating the nation more credible in the eyes of the rural masses.

So at this point, the Communist Party has an advantage over its opponents. After the fall of the empire in 1911, China was divided by warlords everywhere. The (early) Kuomintang intends to rebuild a strong and unitary republic in this dilapidated new China. For a while, the short-term goals of the two parties seem to be the same.The political foundations of both sides are in some of the more advanced large cities in southern China (the Republic will be the capital of one of them); One side is close to the masses of peasants and workers—for example, both sides have the same proportion of men from the traditional landlord and gentry class, that is, the elites of imperial China, but in the Communist Party, there seem to be more Western-style educated people (North/Pool, 1966, pp. 378-382).The beginning of the movement on both sides was also based on the anti-imperialist trend of thought in the early years of this century, and it was further strengthened after the "May 4th Movement" (a wave of national thought initiated by students and teachers in Beijing in 1919).Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Kuomintang, was a patriot, democrat, and socialist who was taught and supported by Soviet Russia - the only revolutionary and anti-imperialist force at the time - while discovering the Bolshevik-style one-party model , is more suitable for him to complete the task than the Western model.In fact, the reason why the Communist Party has become a major party in China is mostly because of this route of joining hands with the Soviet Union.The CCP not only joined the formal national movement, but also joined the Republic after Sun Yat-sen passed away in 1925, extending its influence to the Northern Expeditionary Army in northern China.Sun Yat-sen's successor, Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975), never achieved full control over the whole of China, although he fell out with Russia in 1927 and carried out a purge to suppress the Communists.The latter had a mass base at that time, mainly a small group of urban working class.

So the Communist Party had to turn its attention to the countryside, where a guerrilla war against the Kuomintang was launched, but overall, the results were minimal - the chaos of the struggle within the Communist Party, and Moscow's ignorance of China's current situation, naturally hurt effect. In 1934, after the heroic "Long March", the Chinese Communist Army was forced to retreat to a remote corner of the northwest border region.Various circumstances made Mao Zedong, who had long been in favor of adopting rural tactics, become the undisputed natural leader of the CCP during the years when the CCP was trapped in Yan'an.But the new situation offered no prospects for the leap forward of the Communist Party itself.On the contrary, until Japan launched the war of aggression against China in 1937, the Kuomintang gradually established its rule over most of China.

However, the Kuomintang lacked the real goal of attracting the masses of the Chinese people. In addition, it abandoned the revolutionary line that also had the significance of modernization and national revival at the time, so it was certainly not the opponent of the Communist Party.Chiang Kai-shek was never going to be another Kemal - Kemal also led a modern, anti-imperialist national war, befriending the young Soviet republic while using the local communist party for his own benefit , and then kicked it away; it’s just that Kemal’s methods are not as aggressive as Chiang’s — Chiang Kai-shek, like Kemal, also has an army, but this is not an army that is loyal to the country, let alone the Communist Party Has a revolutionary integrity.The members of this force are those who know that they can fight the world in turmoil with a gun and a uniform.The officers who lead the team are a group of guys who know that "power can be produced from the barrel of a gun"-just as Mao Zedong himself is well aware of this-and they can also "produce wealth".Falling in the urban middle class, he has a considerable support base, and overseas Chinese may support him even more.However, 90% of the common people in China live outside the cities, and 90% of the land in China belongs to the countryside.These vast lands—if there is any control at all—are in the hands of powerful local people, ranging from self-respecting warlords who support the army to gentry left over from the previous dynasty, and the Kuomintang has reached a compromise with them.The Japanese launched a large-scale invasion of China, and the Kuomintang troops could not resist the Japanese army's fierce attack on the coastal cities where its elite forces were located.In the rest of China, the Kuomintang finally became just another corrupt regime of landlords and warlords that it always could have become, and even if it engaged in resistance against Japan, the effect was extremely limited.At the same time, the Communist Party mobilized the masses to carry out resistance against Japan in the enemy's rear, which was very effective.After a brief civil war in which the Kuomintang was almost mercilessly defeated, the Communist Party took over China in 1949, and the 40-year interruption of unification after the end of the imperial dynasty finally came to an end.For all Chinese people—except for the remnants of the Kuomintang who fled elsewhere—the Communist Party is the legitimate government of China and the true heir to the orthodoxy of the Chinese regime.In the eyes of everyone, it is also regarded as such.Because with many years of experience in practicing the Marxist-Leninist Party Program, the Communist Party’s rule is sufficient to issue orders across the country and establish a strict national system, starting from the central government and continuing to the most remote rural areas of the vast country—in the minds of most Chinese, a decent That's how your empire should be.Organizational discipline, not dogma, is the greatest gift of Leninist Bolshevism to a changing world.

Communist China, however, is much more than a revival of an old empire.Of course, China's history has lasted for thousands of years, and the Communist Party has benefited a lot.Because during this long and continuous period of time, the Chinese people have learned how to face the rule of the regime born in response to the "mandate of heaven"; and those who are in charge of the government have also mastered the way of governance.Please see that there is no second communist country in the world that would quote an official's loyalty to Emperor Jiajing in the 16th century in its political debate. In the 1950s, an old-fashioned China observer—a special correspondent of The Times—predicted (including the author of this book) that at that time, there would be no communist countries in the world except China in the 21st century; And communism will also become a national ideology in China.That's what he meant.Because for most Chinese people, this revolution is mainly a "return to the old": return to peace and order and welfare, return to the government system inherited from the Tang Dynasty, and restore the old view of great empires and civilizations.

For the first few years, this seemed to be the reward for ordinary Chinese people.Farmers' grain production increased by as much as 70% between 1949 and 1956 (China Statistics, 1989, p. 165), probably because they have not been disturbed too much.When China began to intervene in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, although it inevitably caused quite a panic, but in the face of the powerful US military, the Chinese Communist Army was able to defeat it first, and then reject it. This strength is really intolerable underestimate.The development plan for industry and education also started in the mid-1950s.Since 1956, the friendship between the CCP and the Soviet Union has deteriorated rapidly. In 1960, the two communist regimes finally broke up, so Moscow withdrew its important technology and various aids.But the suffering of the Chinese people did not start from this, and the withdrawal of aid only made it worse.The cross of their crucifixion mainly comes from three aspects: one is the rapid collectivization of rural areas from 1955 to 1957; The greatest famine in human history; the third is the catastrophe of the "Cultural Revolution" for ten years, which ended with Mao's death in 1976.

It is generally believed that several catastrophic aggressive advances were attributed to Mao himself to a certain extent.His policies were often only reluctantly accepted within the CCP Central Committee, and sometimes even faced open and frank opposition-the most obvious example can be seen in the Great Leap Forward.His means of dealing with these objections was to set off a "cultural revolution."But we must first understand the unique nature of the Chinese Communist Party before we can further understand these things; and Mao himself is the best spokesperson for it.The Chinese Communist Party is different from the Russian Communist Party in that they have no direct relationship with Marx and his thoughts.It is a "post-October Revolution" movement, and it came into contact with Marx through Lenin, or to be more precise, it learned about Marx through Stalin's "Marxism-Leninism."Mao's own understanding of Marx's theory seems to have been almost entirely derived from the "Concise Course on the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)" (1939) (History of the CPSU (b): Short Course of 1939) written by the Stalinists.Before he became the leader of the country, Mao had never been abroad, and the formation of his ideas and knowledge were all made in China.But even this idea is close to Marx's thinking, because all social revolutionary dreams have something in common, and Mao Mao - no doubt with great sincerity - just captures some of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism. To prove the correctness of his theory.However, the ideal society he imagined, a society where everyone speaks with one voice and agrees completely, "individual self-sacrifice, full participation in the social collective, will eventually stop at the ultimate good...a mysterious thought of collectivism", in fact, coincides with the classical Marx's thinking is completely opposite. At least in theory and ultimate goal, the latter advocates comprehensive personal liberation and self-fulfillment (Schwartz, 1966).The CCP believes that a person can be transformed to produce spiritual transformation power.This emphasis on the mind's ability to change, though derived successively from Lenin and then Stalin's belief in conscious awareness and the power of free will, is carried too far.For all his faith in the role of determination in political action, Lenin never lost sight of reality—how could he? ——He knew that the effectiveness of his actions was limited by the reality; even Stalin knew that there were limits to the exercise of his power. Shan Shengtian, the excessive behavior of the "Great Leap Forward" is simply unimaginable, how could it happen?Experts can tell you what can be done and what cannot be done; but as long as there is revolutionary fanaticism, all material obstacles can be overcome, and the willpower can transform external objects.Therefore, the meaning of "red" is not that it is more important than "special", but that it points out another way. In 1958, all parts of China simultaneously set off a burst of enthusiasm. This enthusiasm will make China "immediately" industrialize, jump through several generations, and enter the future.And in the end, communism must be fully implemented "immediately".As a result, countless inferior blast furnaces in their own backyards have been put into production floods; relying on indigenous steelmaking, China's steel production doubled within a year-by 1960, it even more than tripled.But in 1962, it fell back to a lower level than before the Great Leap Forward.These soil blast furnaces are just one side of the transformation.Another 24,000 "people's communes" were established in less than two months in mid-1958; the farmers in the communes represented another transformation.These communes are out-and-out "communism", which not only collectivizes all aspects of peasant life, including family life - such as kindergartens and canteens run by the commune, freeing women from the labor of housework and childcare On the contrary, they were organized into teams and sent to the fields - and the six basic supplies were used to completely replace the labor income and money income of the farm family.The six supplies are: food, medicine, education, funerals, haircuts, and movies.Obviously, this set doesn't work.Within a few months, the most extreme example of the communal system was finally abandoned under the passive resistance of all, but it was not until 1960-1961 that natural disasters and man-made disasters combined to cause a great famine (as in the collectivization campaign promoted by Stalin) It's just over.

On the one hand, this belief in the power of the will was in fact primarily derived from Mao's belief in "the people": the people were ready to accept change, and therefore were willing - with their creativity, and with all their inherent wisdom and inventiveness ——Participate in this great Great Leap Forward project.Basically, this is the artist’s romantic view, and it is this romantic mentality that led him to disregard the doubts and pragmatic advice put forward by other leaders in the party. From 1956 to 1957, he launched the “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, A Hundred Schools of Thought Contend” movement, appealing to the old elite Come out and respond, express their views freely.Mao initiated this movement based on the assumption that these old intellectuals might have been completely reformed during the revolution (or even inspired by him himself).As a result, just as other comrades with “less appealing power” feared, this sudden rush of free thought proved that there was no unanimous enthusiasm for the new order.Mao's natural distrust of intellectuals was confirmed; his suspicion and distrust of intellectuals reached the highest level during the ten-year Cultural Revolution.In ten years, China's higher education was tantamount to a complete shutdown, and the original intellectuals were sent to work in the countryside.However, Mao's trust in the peasant masses remained unchanged. During the Great Leap Forward, under the same principle of "contending among a hundred schools of thought" (that is, making use of local experience in various places), he urged the latter to find various ways to solve production problems.Mao Zedong fundamentally believed that struggle, conflict and tension are not only indispensable in life, but also the only way to prevent China from repeating the mistakes of the old society.Because the unwavering harmony that the old society insisted on is exactly where China’s weakness lies—this point is actually another chapter where Mao found arguments in Marx’s theory to support his ideas.The revolution, as well as communism itself, must rely on continuous struggle to keep the blood flowing without clogging.Revolution can never stop. The peculiarity of Mao Zedong's line lies in its "extreme Westernization, but at the same time partial return to tradition."In fact, the traditional model was the foundation upon which the Maoist regime relied heavily.As for the development of industrialization based on the Soviet Union, with a high tendency towards heavy industry, it is the absolute first priority.The absurdity of the Great Leap Forward mainly comes from a blind view—this is the same between China and the Soviet Union—that not only must agriculture be used to support industry, but at the same time, agriculture must find ways to be self-reliant, because all resources must be invested in industry .This practice of emphasizing industry and despising agriculture means paying back debts with "spiritual" instead of "material" incentives.Turning into reality, in China, it becomes the replacement of unobtainable "technology" with endless "manpower".The Chinese countryside has always been the cornerstone of the Maoist system, just as it has not changed since the guerrilla era.The Great Leap Forward moved mountains and seas, and the Chinese countryside became the best place for industrialization, which was different from the Soviet Union.Under Mao, China did not undergo any large-scale urbanization—again, unlike the Soviet Union—and it was not until the 1980s that the rural population fell below 80%. The 20 years of Mao Zedong's rule were mixed with surreal fantasies.The world is naturally shocked by this confusion.But we must also see that, by the standards of the third world suffering from poverty, the lives of ordinary Chinese people are not bad.At the end of the Maoist period, the average food consumption of the Chinese people (in terms of calories) was just above the median of all countries in the world, higher than 14 countries in the Americas and 38 countries in Africa, and also in the middle in Asia—far exceeding Singapore and Malaysia South Asia and all Southeast Asia outside the two countries (Taylor/jodice, Table 4.4).The average life expectancy of Chinese people at birth also increased from 35 years in 1949 to 68 years in 1982—while the death rate continued to decline (Liu, 1986, p. 323-324).And even taking the Great Famine into account, from 1949 to Mao Zedong's death, China's population still increased from about 500 million to more than 950 million. It can be seen that the Chinese economy has a way to feed everyone after all-a little bit compared to the level in the 1950s See growth - the supply of clothing has also improved slightly (China Statistics, Table T15.1).As for Chinese education, it was affected by the famine and the Cultural Revolution at the same time, even elementary education was no exception.Under natural disasters and man-made disasters, the number of enrollments dropped sharply by about 25 million.But it is undeniable that in the year Mao died, the number of schoolchildren entering primary schools in China was six times higher than when he took power—that is, the enrollment rate was as high as 96%, compared with even in China. In 1952, the proportion was less than 50%, and of course it was even more successful.It is true that even in 1987, more than a quarter of the total population over the age of 20 was illiterate or semi-literate—the proportion of women who were illiterate was as high as 38%—but let us not forget that literacy is the China is an extremely difficult matter; among the 34% of the population born before 1949, very few are fortunate enough to be fully educated (China Statistics, pp. 69, 70-72, 695).Put simply, Mao's achievements may have been nothing to a skeptical Western observer -- and many lacked any -- but to an Indian or an Indonesian, his Quite extraordinary.For the 80% of Chinese people who belong to the peasant class and are isolated from the outside world, they are naturally more satisfied.Their expectations are, at most, the same as those of their ancestors. However, on the international stage, China has clearly lagged behind since the revolution, especially compared with its non-Communist neighbors.Although its national average economic growth rate was quite outstanding during Mao Zedong’s rule (1960-1975), it was far less than Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, the East Asian countries and regions that the CCP must pay close attention to. Obviously paled in comparison.Although China's GNP is huge, it is only comparable to that of Canada, less than that of Italy, and only a quarter of that of Japan (Taylor/jordice, Table 3.5, 3.6).In short, since the mid-1950s, this roundabout journey led by the great helmsman has been full of dangers. The reason why it can continue is because Mao, with the support of the army, launched a war in 1965. The student-led anarchic "Red Guard" movement against the party central leadership who had been silently dissenting from him, and against all intellectuals.This is the Cultural Revolution that has engulfed China in catastrophe for many years.In the end, Mao had to call in the army to clean up the mess and restore order.At the same time, he found that he himself had to give in a little and restore the party's control to some extent.Mao himself was clearly at the end of his life, and without Mao's Maoism, there would be no real support.So shortly after the death of the great leader in 1976, the "Gang of Four" led by his widow Jiang Qing was arrested almost immediately.Immediately after, the pragmatic line led by Deng Xiaoping came into play.