People's Republic of China

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People's Republic of China
PRCFounding.jpg
Mao Zedong proclaims the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949.
Chinese 中华人民共和国

People's Republic of China has been the long-form name of the Chinese government since 1949. As an era of Chinese history, the People's Republic follows the Republic of China and continues to the present. The previous regime led by the Nationalist Party fled to Taiwan in 1949. The Nationalists continued to represent China in the United Nations until 1971, when China's seat was transferred to the PRC. The PRC invaded Korea in 1950 and fought the United States in the Korean War (1950-1953). The Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) was a time of famine. The PRC has been a one-party communist state throughout its history. Until his death in 1976, Mao Zedong was its paramount leader. Since Mao's death, the PRC has moved away from Marxist economics and embraced the market system. As a result, its economy has experienced rapid growth and the power of the Chinese Communist Party strengthened. It now has the second largest economy and military in the world and is challenging the United States as the pre-dominant world Superpower.

Government

The CCP is an alien organization to China, funded and supported in the 1920s by the Soviet Union. It imported the ideological refuse of Western civilization into China. It first followed Marxism, then Maoism and now Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (state market totalitarianism). As a totalitarian far left organization, it promoted a Cultural Revolution in which all vestiges of traditional Chinese culture were removed, including all sorts of buildings, not to mention killing teachers and scientists, among others. It replaced most old books with rewritten Party history books and pamphlets, creating a fake version of history that does not match the version of events acknowledged by the rest of the world, and promoting this version in every school (and recently, in every university).

Xi and Mao

Politburo Standing Committee

The 7 member Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) is the most senior leadership body with each member ranked 1 thru 7, not as equals. Each shoulders primary responsibility for a specific portfolio. The Paramount Leader, Xi Jinping as of 2020, is ranked No. 1. Past Paramount Leaders have been in order of succession:

The Paramount Leader usually holds three positions, Party General Secretary, President or Head of State, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission or Commander-in-chief of the People's Liberation Army. The Central Military Commission is not under civilian control of the State Council. In the Chinese Communist party structure, the Central Military Commission is of equal rank as the civilian bureaucracy.

State Council

The Party entrusts implementation of its policies and day-to-day administration of the country to the institution of the State, headed by the civilian State Council or Cabinet, which does not include the Central Military Commission. The State Council, also known as the Central People’s Government, includes the State’s ministries and commissions and layers of “people’s governments” below the national level. The top State officials at every level of administration usually concurrently hold senior Party posts, to ensure Party control. While the Foreign Ministry is a mere ministry under the State Council, the Central Military Commission of the People's Liberation is not. In the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy, the Central Military Commission is of equal rank to the civilian bureaucracy of the State Council that manages domestic and foreign affairs.

The State President serves as China’s head of state. Since 1993, every Communist Party General Secretary has served concurrently as State President, but the position is largely ceremonial and involves few duties other than meeting with foreign heads of state. The State President and State Vice President rank below the Central Military Commission. The Minister of Defense is actually the third most senior uniformed member of the Central Military Commission and is outside the operational chain of command of the People's Liberation Army.

To understand the political system of the People's Republic of China, there are two constitutions, a Party constitution and a state constitution. Both constitutions make it clear that the Party exercises leadership of the political system, the economy, and society at large,

Party committees are embedded in the State Council, ministries under the State Council, the legislature, the courts, prosecutors’ offices, state-owned enterprises, and all other public institutions, such as universities and hospitals, as well as in most private companies and many non-governmental organizations.

At the sub-national level, provinces, counties, and townships all have a Party committee and a parallel people’s government, with the Party Secretary of the Party committee serving as the geographic unit’s top leader.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) and later the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC) led the health care system in the transplantation of organs. Since organ transplantation has been made a high priority in the CCP’s national strategy and heavily emphasized as a future emerging industry, a large number of organ transplant projects have been funded under major national programs. The Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, other departments, and the military have invested heavily in research, development, and personnel training in transplantation technology to meet the needs of this rapidly-growing industry. New capabilities and techniques have emerged and been extensively spreading, allowing live organ transplantation in China to grow into a large, industrialized operation in less than two decades.

Economy

As of 2020 in the United States, the poverty threshold for a single person is considered to be $1,063 per month; according to Beijing Normal University research, around 964 million have incomes of under 2,000 yuan ($283) per month. That’s 69% of the total population.[1]

Foreign policy

Sino-Soviet split

See also: Deviationism

After the death of Stalin, Mao did not consider Stalin's lieutenants who succeeded him as equals, and showed an increasing willingness to depart from the Moscow-directed worldwide communist revolution declared by Lenin in 1919.

In 1958, Mao broke with the Soviet model and announced a new economic program, the "Great Leap Forward," aimed at rapidly raising industrial and agricultural production. Giant cooperatives (communes) were formed, and "backyard factories" dotted the Chinese landscape. The results were disastrous. Normal market mechanisms were disrupted, agricultural production fell behind, and China's people exhausted themselves producing what turned out to be shoddy, un-salable goods. Within a year, starvation appeared even in fertile agricultural areas. From 1960 to 1961, the combination of poor planning during the Great Leap Forward and bad weather resulted in one of the deadliest famines in human history.

The already strained Sino-Soviet relationship deteriorated sharply in 1959, when the Soviets started to restrict the flow of scientific and technological information to China. The dispute escalated, and the Soviets withdrew all of their personnel from China in August 1960. In 1960, the Soviets and the Chinese began to have disputes openly in international forums.

By 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the planet to the brink of nuclear war, Beijing ceased entirely taking its strategic foreign policy direction from the reckless Moscow band of Marxists.

Rapprochement with the U.S.

In 1972 the world was stunned when American President Richard Nixon visited Beijing, ending the cold war between the two countries and opening an era of détente and friendship that continues into the 21st century.[2]

After 1978, Mao's successor Deng Xiaoping focused on market-oriented economic development, and by 2000 output had quadrupled, population growth ended (by imposing a one-child policy), and good relations were secured with the West. For much of the population, living standards have improved dramatically and the room for personal choice has expanded, yet political controls and Internet censorship remain tight.

For regime survival, the CCP sought to reshape external perception of China after it opened up to the world in the late 1970s. To that end, the Party moved to control and influence critical channels of messaging delivery—schools, think tanks, media, business, and political elites—to ensure effective delivery of its propaganda. In the coming decades the CCP successfully created a “Red Matrix,” or an informational environment that is largely pro-China and lacking in key knowledge about the CCP.

During the First Cold War the Soviet Union formed the Iron Curtain to “block out” the West. The CCP, however, created a Red Matrix to “plug in” the world to a view of China that the CCP controlled. The result of these influence operations were decades of misinformation and disinformation about China that has been knowingly or unknowingly produced by Western information repositories and providers.[3]

One Belt, One Road Initiative

Main article: One Belt One Road

Chinese officials are quite open that Belt and Road is aimed at creating a Eurasia wide Chinese led bloc to counter the United States.

Society

Religious intolerance

The Chinese Communist Party persecutes the country's Christian population, as well as the Falun Gong population, and Tibetan Buddhists. There are several well-documented cases of abuse, torture and false imprisonment.[4]

In 1950, the CCP instructed its local governments to ban all unofficial religious faiths and secret societies. The CCP stated that those “feudalistic” underground groups were mere tools in the hands of landlords, rich farmers, reactionaries, and special agents of the Kuomintang (KMT). In the nationwide crackdown, the government mobilized the classes they trusted to identify and persecute members of religious groups.

The communist controlled Chinese embassy in France tweeted an anti-Semitic image portraying the United States as the grim reaper carrying an Israeli flag knocking on Hong Kong's door.[5]

Governments at various levels were directly involved in disbanding such “superstitious groups,” such as communities of Christians, Catholics, Taoists, and Buddhists. They ordered all members of these churches, temples, and religious societies to register with government agencies and to repent for their involvement. Failure to do so would mean severe punishment.

In 1951, the government formally promulgated regulations stating that those who continued their activities in unofficial religious groups would face a life sentence or the death penalty.

This movement persecuted a large number of kind-hearted and law-abiding believers in God. Incomplete statistics indicate that in the 1950s, the CCP persecuted at least 3 million religious believers and underground group members, some of whom were killed. The CCP searched almost every household across the nation and interrogated its members. The executions reinforced the CCP’s message that communist ideology was the only legitimate ideology and the only legitimate faith.

The concept of “patriotic believers” soon emerged, and the state constitution protected only patriotic believers. The reality was that, whatever religion you believed in, there were only these criteria: You had to follow the CCP’s instructions, and you had to acknowledge that the CCP was above all religions. If you were a Christian, the CCP was the God of the Christian God. If you were a Buddhist, the CCP was the Master Buddha of the Master Buddha. Among Muslims, the CCP was the Allah of the Allah. When it came to the Living Buddha in Tibetan Buddhism, the CCP would intervene, and itself choose who the Living Buddha would be.

The CCP left you no choice but to say and do what the CCP demanded you to say and do. All believers were forced to carry out the CCP’s objectives while upholding their respective faiths in name only. Failing to do so would make you the target of the CCP’s persecution and dictatorship.

According to a Feb. 22, 2002, report by Chinese online magazine Ren yu Renquan (Humanity and Human Rights), 20,000 Christians conducted a survey among 560,000 Christians in house churches in 207 cities in 22 provinces in China. The survey found that, among house church attendees, 130,000 were under government surveillance.

In the book “How the Chinese Communist Party Persecuted Christians,”[6] it is stated that by 1957, the CCP had killed more than 11,000 religious adherents and had arbitrarily arrested and extorted money from many more.

By eliminating the landlord class and the capitalist class and by persecuting large numbers of God-worshipping and law-abiding people, the CCP cleared the way for communism to become the all-encompassing religion of China.

Cultural Revolution

In the early 1960s, State President Liu Shaoqi and his protégé, Party General Secretary Deng Xiaoping, took over direction of the party and adopted pragmatic economic policies at odds with Mao's revolutionary vision. Dissatisfied with China's new direction and his own reduced authority, Party Chairman Mao launched a massive political attack on Liu, Deng, and other pragmatists in the spring of 1966. The new movement, the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," was unprecedented in communist history. For the first time, a section of the Chinese communist leadership sought to rally popular opposition against another leadership group. China was set on a course of political and social anarchy that lasted the better part of a decade.

In the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, Mao and his "closest comrade in arms," National Defense Minister Lin Biao, charged Liu, Deng, and other top party leaders with dragging China back toward capitalism. Radical youth organizations, called Red Guards, attacked party and state organizations at all levels, seeking out leaders who would not bend to the radical wind.

Gradually, Red Guard and other radical activity subsided, and the Chinese political situation stabilized along complex factional lines. The leadership conflict came to a head in September 1971, when Party Vice Chairman and Defense Minister Lin Biao reportedly tried to stage a coup against Mao; Lin Biao later died in a plane crash in Mongolia.

Mao's regime imposed strict controls over everyday life and cost the lives of tens of millions of people. The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 was inspired by Mao and devastated the intellectual class. Tens of thousands of intellectuals and teachers were educators were insulted, tortured, driven to suicide or executed by their students. Mobilized as members of the Red Guards, a new youth organization, the students attacked the educators as "capitalist intellectuals." From 1967 to 1978, the state "send-down" (rustication) policy 17 million urban youth to live and work in rural areas, with a permanent negative impact on their intellectual development and careers.[7]

The upheaval was not limited to the cities. Maoist political ideology and teachings provided the catalyst for village conflicts that brought out traditional grievances and further escalated the conflicts. Some of the catalysts were student activists carrying out Mao's teachings, factional disputes, and the Four Clean-up campaigns that purged village officials and corruption. These conflicts spread to traditional grievances like lineage and hamlet hostilities and disputes over leadership and rights. Often, the conflicts caused by Party politics intersected traditional conflicts to the extent that the root causes of the conflicts were lost. This resulted in further escalation of the conflicts, which became more complex and widespread.

In rural China an estimated 750,000 to 1.5 million people were killed, and about as many permanently injured; 36 million who suffered some form of political persecution. The vast majority of these casualties occurred from 1968 to 1971, after the end of the period of popular rebellion and factional conflict and the establishment of provisional organs of local state power.[8]

Mao's policies were illustrated in posters that used art for political purposes. The posters glorified Mao, criticized his opponents, urged cooperation among all revolutionary groups, and condemned capitalism and foreign imperialists.[9] Major leadership changes and purges occurred at the top, involving Lin Biao, the Gang of Four, and Deng Xiaoping.

Tiananmen Square massacre

Remains of what used to be human beings in the Tiananmen Square democracy protests.[10]
Main article: Tiananmen Square massacre

After Zhao became the party General Secretary, the economic and political reforms he had championed came under increasing attack. His proposal in May 1988 to accelerate price reform led to widespread popular complaints about rampant inflation and gave opponents of rapid reform the opening to call for greater centralization of economic controls and stricter prohibitions against Western influence. This precipitated a political debate, which grew more heated through the winter of 1988-89.

The death of Hu Yaobang on April 15, 1989, coupled with growing economic hardship caused by high inflation, provided the backdrop for a large-scale protest movement by students, intellectuals, and other parts of a disaffected urban population. University students and other citizens camped out in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to mourn Hu's death and to protest against those who would slow reform. Their protests, which grew despite government efforts to contain them, called for an end to official corruption and for defense of freedoms guaranteed by the Chinese constitution. Protests also spread to many other cities, including Shanghai, Chengdu, and Guangzhou.

Martial law was declared on May 20, 1989. Late on June 3 and early on the morning of June 4, military units were brought into Beijing. They used armed force to clear demonstrators from the streets. There are no official estimates of deaths in Beijing, but most observers believe that casualties numbered in the hundreds.

After June 4, while foreign governments expressed horror at the brutal suppression of the demonstrators, the central government eliminated remaining sources of organized opposition, detained large numbers of protesters, and required political reeducation not only for students but also for large numbers of party cadre and government officials.

Following the resurgence of conservatives in the aftermath of June 4, economic reform slowed until given new impetus by Deng Xiaoping's dramatic visit to southern China in early 1992. Deng's renewed push for a market-oriented economy received official sanction at the 14th Party Congress later in the year as a number of younger, reform-minded leaders began their rise to top positions. Deng and his supporters argued that managing the economy in a way that increased living standards should be China's primary policy objective, even if "capitalist" measures were adopted. Subsequent to the visit, the Communist Party Politburo publicly issued an endorsement of Deng's policies of economic openness. Though not completely eschewing political reform, China has consistently placed overwhelming priority on the opening of its economy.

Persecution of Falun Gong

See also: Forced organ harvesting

The CCP has a long history of violently suppressing faith as “feudal superstition.” Given the number of Falun Gong practitioners in the country, the CCP’s persecution was a massive undertaking. The practice became enormously popular—with roughly 100 million adherents in China by 1999, according to official estimates. Threatened by this number, which was greater than the number of Party members, Jiang ordered the brutal suppression of Falun Gong practitioners.

These values come from the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center (CITNAC) at www.zoukiishoku.com. CITNAC was founded in the transplantation institute at the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University. Its website was shutdown soon after organ harvesting was exposed, here is the archived page.

In China there were more than 600 hospitals and over 1,700 doctors engaged in organ transplant surgeries in 2007. The statistics published by the Tianjin Oriental Organ Transplant Center and the No. 2 Hospital of the Second Military Medical University (also known as Shanghai Changzheng Hospital), two hospitals that have close ties to the Chinese military, provide a glimpse into the rapid growth of China's organ transplant market. The China Southern Weekend reported, "The Oriental Organ Transplant Center's rapid growth has brought about huge revenue and profits. According to previous media reports, liver transplants alone bring the Center an annual income of 100 million yuan". According to a Phoenix Weekly 2006 report, "In 2004, the fee for a liver transplant at the Oriental Organ Transplant Center was $32,000 (approximately 250,000 yuan). In 2005, it was over $40,000 (approximately 330,000 yuan). Some intermediary agencies charged a brokering fee as high as USD $13,000."

People with financial means are willing to buy organs at a high cost, and the huge profit pushes the hospitals to pursue new sources of organs by all means necessary to increase their profit margins. Given China's political and legal environment, certain groups of people become especially susceptible targets. Namely, Falun Gong practitioners.[11]

In March 2020 the China Tribunal, an independent people’s tribunal, released its full judgment on Chinese forced organ harvesting.[12] The panel was chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice who previously led the prosecution of former Yugoslavia Prime Minister Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal and included other experts in law, transplant surgery, international politics, Chinese history and business. The experts concluded that the grisly practice has continued unabated. In June 2019 the tribunal delivered its findings in London, concluding beyond a reasonable doubt that state sanctioned forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has taken place for years in China on a significant scale and is still taking place. The main organ supply came from imprisoned practitioners of the persecuted spiritual group Falun Gong.[13]

The Chinese regime has persecuted the group for more than two decades. Hundreds of thousands of adherents have been thrown into prisons, labor camps, and brainwashing centers where many have been tortured in an effort to force them to renounce their faith. The tribunal concluded that the Chinese regime sustained campaign of forced organ harvesting constituted a crime against humanity. Many people have died indescribable hideous deaths for no reason, that more may suffer in similar ways, and that all of us live on a planet where extreme wickedness may be found in the power of those, who for the time being, are running a country that is one of the oldest civilizations known to modern man.[14]

Persecution of Uyghurs

According to various estimates, Xinjiang authorities have detained over 1 million Turkic Muslims, mostly ethnic Uyghurs, and Kazakhs, in “reeducation camps” without formal charges, trials or hearings, and with no timetable for release. Many detainees have little or no contact with their families and, in some cases, young children. Some CCP officials describe the Xinjiang camps as “vocational education institutions” in which “trainees” learn the Chinese language, legal knowledge, and job skills, and undergo “de-extremization.” Other CCP authorities state that detainees are “infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology.” According to some reports, many detainees had engaged in activities that authorities may now deem “extremist,” including participating in religious services outside of officially sanctioned places of worship; home-schooling one’s children; spending time abroad or having relatives living abroad; and expressing religious sentiments.

Many detainees reportedly are compelled to express or chant their love of the Communist Party and President Xi Jinping, sing patriotic songs, renounce or reject many of their religious beliefs and customs, including their avoidance of pork, alcohol, and smoking, and undergo ideological indoctrination and self-criticisms. According to former detainees, treatment and conditions in the camps include beatings, food deprivation, and crowded and unsanitary conditions. Some reeducation centers reportedly contain factories where detainees are forced to work, in some cases producing goods for export.

Recent security measures include the following:

  • Police Presence and Surveillance: Thousands of “convenience” police stations, furnished with antiriot and high-tech surveillance equipment, have been installed.
  • Biometric data collection: Authorities have systematically collected and cataloged DNA samples, blood types, and fingerprints and performed eye scans of Uyghurs for identification purposes as part of its social stability campaign, often under the guise of “health physicals.”
  • Internet and Social Media Controls: Uyghurs in some areas of the XUAR are required to install an application on their mobile phones that enables authorities to monitor their online activities.
  • Home stays: The government has sent an estimated one million officials and state workers from outside the XUAR, mostly ethnic Han, to live temporarily in the homes of Uyghurs to assess their hosts’ loyalty to the Communist Party.[15]

According to some reports, the CCP has begun to move large numbers of Uyghurs, including many former detainees, into textile, apparel, and other labor-intensive industries in Xinjiang and other PRC provinces. Uyghurs who refuse to accept such employment may be threatened with detention. They continue to be heavily monitored outside of work, and are required to attend political study classes at night. A study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute identified nearly 120 Chinese and foreign companies, including global brands, that the institute alleges directly or indirectly benefit from Uyghur labor in potentially abusive circumstances.[16]

Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 83 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen. In factories far away from home, they typically live in segregated dormitories, undergo organised Mandarin and ideological training outside working hours, are subject to constant surveillance, and are forbidden from participating in religious observances.[17]

Disputed Territories

Grafetti from the late November 2019 Hong Kong democracy protests reads: "Dear World, CCP will infiltrate your government, Chinese enterprises $ interfere your political stance, China will harvest your home like Xinjiang. BE AWARE or BE NEXT!"[18]
Main article: Hong Kong Independence Movement

The Hong Kong branch of the Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1947 as the Xinhua News Agency Hong Kong Branch. Although the party has ruled Hong Kong since 1997, it remains technically illegal, or "underground." This status, unique among the world's ruling parties, allows the CCP to evade local laws that require political parties to disclose financing and to provide a membership list. In 2000, the name of the branch was changed to "Liaison Office of the Central People's Government." It is headquartered in a tower in the city's Sai Ying Pun district. In 2003, the office was reorganized as a "second government" parallel and equal in status to the "local government" in Admiralty. Since 2012, Sai Ying Pun has been the dominant partner in the Hong Kong government. The Liaison Office is headed by a director, currently Luo Huining. Luo is a member of the national party's central committee. The office has extensive and undisclosed property holdings through Newman Investment, a subsidiary. The office reports to the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, an agency of the Beijing government. This agency is currently headed by Xia Baolong, also a central committee member.

The Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 provides that Hong Kong will enjoy a "high degree of autonomy except for foreign and defence affairs" under a "one country, two systems" approach. This approach was to last for fifty years, from 1997 to 2047. China promised that it would hold a direct election for chief executive by 2017. In August 2014, the Chinese parliament announced that Hong Kong voters would choose a chief executive from two or three candidates nominated by a committee. This announcement triggered mass pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in the form of the Umbrella Movement. The protests failed to the stop the selection of Carrie Lam as chief executive in 2017. In 2017, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that the joint declaration was no longer valid.

In 2019 the Hong Kong government proposed a bill to extradite suspects who were wanted on the mainland. Unlike Hong Kong courts, mainland courts do not provide suspects with due process or other legal protections. A series of the enormous protests were held in Hong Kong and the bill was withdrawn on October 23, 2019. Parties that supported the pro-democracy protesters swept the District Council elections that were held in November.[19]

Manchuria

Main article: Manchurian Independence Movement

Southern Mongolia

3-march-2012-001.jpg
Main article: Southern Mongolian Independence Movement

East Turkestan

Main article: East Turkestan

East Turkestan was an independent country until the year 1949, when it was invaded by the Communist Chinese.[20] From the years 1951-1959, there were over 14 major armed rebellions against the Chinese occupation. The largest armed rebellion took place in Khotan from December 28-31, 1954.

The main inhabitants of East Turkestan are the Uighurs among other Turkic peoples such as Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Uzbek and Tatars.

Tibet (includes Qinghai, Western Sichuan and Northern Yunnan)

Main article: Tibet

Resistance to the Chinese occupation started to take on organized forms as early as 1952, reached massive proportions in 1959, and has continued, primarily underground, ever since.[21] Tibetans inside Tibet have no basic human rights. Particularly, nuns and monks are being denied the right to practice their religion freely. People are forced to denounce their spiritual leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Even carrying a photo of the Dalai Lama is prohibited.[22]

The Dalai Lama, the Head of State of Tibet, is escorted out of an Oval Office meeting with Barack Obama past garbage bags; the photo-op was staged to please Obama's communist Chinese financiers.[23]

The Dalai Lama was made Tibetan head of state in 1950, the same year that China invaded and occupied Tibet.[24] CNN reports the Chinese find it "unacceptable when they see the Dalai Lama treated as a VIP, or even akin to a head of state."[24]

After the Dalai Lama met with Barack Obama in February, 2010 he was unceremoniously escorted through a side door that trash is regularly carried out for a photo op with awaiting cameras.

On Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's first official visit to China, the Secretary told Chinese leaders the Obama administration considered human rights concerns secondary to economic survival[25] and asked the CCP leaders for help financing President Obama's massive $787 economic stimulus plan by buying US Treasury securities.[26]

Often portrayed as a religious leader by Western media, the Dalai Lama was made Tibetan head of state in 1950, the same year that Communist China committed an act of aggression against Tibet.[27]

History

In the face of economic collapse the Communists won the civil war in 1949 under Mao Zedong (1893-1976). Mao established a dictatorship, driving the KMT to Taiwan. Taiwan is recognized as an integral part of China in theory, but in practice has been independent since 1949. Mao liquidated millions of opponents, fought the United States in the bloody Korean War (1950–53), and broke with the Soviet Union over the issue of who best represented the Marxist orthodoxy.

History of China
Xia c. 2070–c. 1600 BC
Shang c. 1600 – 1046 BC
Zhou 1045–256 BC
Qin 221–206 BC
Han 206 BC – 220 AD
Three Kingdoms 220–280
Jin 265–420
Northern and Southern
Dynasties
420–589
Sui 581–618
Tang 618–907
Five Dynasties and
Ten Kingdoms
907–960
Song 960–1279
Yuan 1271–1368
Ming 1368–1644
Qing 1644–1911
Republic 1912–1949
People's Republic 1949–present

Anti-Landlordism campaign

To seize real power, the CCP went on a nationwide anti-landlord campaign in rural areas and in cities, murdering landlords and their families, allegedly freeing the oppressed. Land owners were tried in public kangaroo courts in village squares where they were openly shamed and mocked, accused of committing crimes against the people. The land, however was transferred to state ownership and not to the people, and Stalinist collectivization imposed based upon the model implemented in the Ukraine in the 1930s (see Holodomor).

These anti-landlord campaigns and murder which the left deems "liberating the people", actually began in the communist occupied territory of Yan'an during World War II, where the communists were hiding out from the Kuomintang and the Japanese even before the party captured the Chinese state in 1949. Landlords were forced into a rectification process, making false confessions and apologies, after which they were murdered.[28]

Great Leap Forward

The Great Leap Forward (1958–60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) were the two worst periods of leftist domination in the history of China. Deng Xiaoping claimed the death toll to be 16 million, while the lowest estimate is 8 million [29]

Mao's grand strategy for Cold War competition inflicted a catastrophic agricultural failure in China and victimized tens of millions of Chinese peasants. After Nikita Khrushchev boasted in 1957 that the Soviet Union would soon surpassing the United States in key economic outputs, Mao decided to launch an even faster industrialization program that would push China past Britain in some production categories within 15 years. Beginning in 1958, Mao imposed unrealistic targets on Chinese grain production to extract funds from agriculture for rapid industrial growth. Maoists placed relentless pressure on Communist cadres for ruthless implementation of the Great Leap Forward. Contrary to Maoist plans, China's grain output in 1959-60 declined sharply from 1957 levels and rural per capita grain retention decreased dramatically. Throughout China, party cadres' mismanagement of agricultural production was responsible for the decline in grain output, and the Communist state's excessive requisition of grain caused food shortages for the peasants. But the key factor determining the famine's uneven impact on the peasantry in the provinces was the degree to which provincial leaders genuinely and energetically embraced Maoist programs.[30]

Although the Great Leap Forward was much more disastrous in both human and economic terms, the Cultural Revolution receives the more negative assessment in China. This harsher review of the Cultural Revolution stems from the facts that it occurred more recently, was much longer in duration, and that many of its victims were cadres and intellectuals.[31] Mao said,
“What can Emperor Qin Shi Huang brag about? He only killed 460 Confucian scholars, but we killed 46,000 intellectuals. There are people who accuse us of practicing dictatorship like Emperor Qin Shi Huang, and we admit to it all. It fits the reality. It is a pity that they did not give us enough credit, so we need to add to it.”[32]

The Post-Mao Era

Mao's death in September 1976 removed a towering figure from Chinese politics and set off a scramble for succession. Former Minister of Public Security Hua Guofeng was quickly confirmed as Party Chairman and Premier. A month after Mao's death, Hua, backed by the PLA, arrested Jiang Qing and other members of the "Gang of Four." After extensive deliberations, the Chinese Communist Party leadership reinstated Deng Xiaoping to all of his previous posts at the 11th Party Congress in August 1977. Deng then led the effort to place government control in the hands of veteran party officials opposed to the radical excesses of the previous two decades.

The new, pragmatic leadership emphasized economic development and renounced mass political movements. At the pivotal December 1978 Third Plenum (of the 11th Party Congress Central Committee), the leadership adopted economic reform policies aimed at expanding rural income and incentives, encouraging experiments in enterprise autonomy, reducing central planning, and attracting foreign direct investment into China. The plenum also decided to accelerate the pace of legal reform, culminating in the passage of several new legal codes by the National People's Congress in June 1979.

After 1979, the Chinese leadership moved toward more pragmatic positions in almost all fields. The party encouraged artists, writers, and journalists to adopt more critical approaches, although open attacks on party authority were not permitted. In late 1980, Mao's Cultural Revolution was officially proclaimed a catastrophe. Hua Guofeng, a protégé of Mao, was replaced as premier in 1980 by reformist Sichuan party chief Zhao Ziyang and as party General Secretary in 1981 by the even more reformist Communist Youth League chairman Hu Yaobang.

Reform policies brought great improvements in the standard of living, especially for urban workers and for farmers who took advantage of opportunities to diversify crops and establish village industries. Literature and the arts blossomed, and Chinese intellectuals established extensive links with scholars in other countries.

At the same time, however, political dissent as well as social problems such as inflation, urban migration, and prostitution emerged. Although students and intellectuals urged greater reforms, some party elders increasingly questioned the pace and the ultimate goals of the reform program. In December 1986, student demonstrators, taking advantage of the loosening political atmosphere, staged protests against the slow pace of reform, confirming party elders' fear that the current reform program was leading to social instability. Hu Yaobang, a protégé of Deng and a leading advocate of reform, was blamed for the protests and forced to resign as CCP General Secretary in January 1987. Premier Zhao Ziyang was made General Secretary and Li Peng, former Vice Premier and Minister of Electric Power and Water Conservancy, was made Premier.

Trial of the Gang of Four

In 1976, after the death of Zhou Enlai in January, the replacement of Deng in April, and Mao's death in September, a short, dramatic struggle ended with the arrest of the Gang of Four, the end of the Cultural revolution, and the transition to the post-Mao era. For a brief moment hope existed that the party might reform itself and the specter of communism cast off from China.

In the aftermath of the Lin Biao fiasco, many officials criticized and dismissed during 1966-69 were reinstated. Chief among these was Deng Xiaoping, who reemerged in 1973 and was confirmed in 1975 in the concurrent posts of Politburo Standing Committee member, PLA Chief of Staff, and Vice Premier.

The ideological struggle between more pragmatic, veteran party officials and the radicals re-emerged with a vengeance in late 1975. Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, and three close Cultural Revolution associates (later dubbed the "Gang of Four") launched a media campaign against Deng. In January 1976, Premier Zhou Enlai, the #2 leader, died of cancer. To save Mao's reputation, all the atrocities and corruption were blame on Mao's wife and others who subsequently were convicted and allegedly committed suicide in prison. Mao however, is revered as a god by communists worldwide and by the CCP to this day.

Third Generation of Leaders

Deng's health deteriorated in the years prior to his death in 1997. During that time, President Jiang Zemin and other members of his generation gradually assumed control of the day-to-day functions of government. This "third generation" leadership governed collectively with President Jiang at the center.

In March 1998, Jiang was re-elected President during the 9th National People's Congress. Premier Li Peng was constitutionally required to step down from that post. He was elected to the chairmanship of the National People's Congress. Zhu Rongji was selected to replace Li as Premier.

Fourth Generation of Leaders

Vice President Joe Biden toasts Xi Jinping.

In November 2002, the 16th Communist Party Congress elected Hu Jintao, who in 1992 was designated by Deng Xiaoping as the "core" of the fourth generation leaders, the new General Secretary. A new Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee was also elected in November.

In March 2003, General Secretary Hu Jintao was elected President at the 10th National People's Congress. Jiang Zemin retained the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission. At the Fourth Party Plenum in September 2004, Jiang Zemin retired from the Central Military Commission, passing the Chairmanship and control of the People's Liberation Army to President Hu Jintao.

China is firmly committed to economic reform and opening to the outside world. The Chinese leadership has identified reform of state industries and the establishment of a social safety net as government priorities. Government strategies for achieving these goals include large-scale privatization of unprofitable state-owned enterprises and development of a pension system for workers. The leadership has also downsized the government bureaucracy.

On March 14, 2013 Xi Jinping was "elected" as new president.[33]

SARS-CoVid-1

Supposedly the 2003 SARS epidemic struck suddenly and there was no time to prepare. In reality, the first cases happened in Guangdong province in late November 2002. Chinese officials didn't inform the World Health Organization about SARS until February 2003. When it started to spread to other regions of China, the CCP covered that up. Eventually SARS was reported to have killed just under eight hundred people in China, but in reality there may have been several thousand more.

Dr. Jiang Yanyong in April 2003 wrote a letter exposing the true number of SARS patients in Beijing, which was several times higher than the official number. His letter was publicized by Western media. The party was forced to respond. They fired several Beijing officials and put Dr. Jiang under surveillance. The Communist Party has never admitted there was a SARS cover-up. But afterwards, the Chinese Communist Party did create what was supposed to be a fail-safe system to track contagions. It failed.

The system put in place focused on having doctors across China put patient data into a centralized database. This way central authorities could monitor if there are any new outbreaks. It suppose to work in theory. In July 2019, eight thousand Chinese health officials conducted a massive online drill focusing on how to handle an infectious disease outbreak. In the style of the 2002 SARS outbreak, the officials raced to test how quickly and effectively they could track, identify, and contain the virus, including by notifying Beijing. It worked in the simulation. But in Th December 2019 Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 outbreak it did not work in reality because the Chinese Communist Party's political apparatus makes it impossible for even the best design system to function properly.

Repression in 2008

In 2008 China's human rights record remained poor and worsened in some areas. During the year the government increased its severe cultural and religious repression of ethnic minorities in Tibetan areas and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), increased detention and harassment of dissidents and petitioners, and maintained tight controls on freedom of speech and the Internet. Abuses peaked around high-profile events, such as the Olympics and the unrest in Tibet. As in previous years, citizens did not have the right to change their government. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), both local and international, continued to face intense scrutiny and restrictions. Other serious human rights abuses included extrajudicial killings, torture and coerced confessions of prisoners, and the use of forced labor, including prison labor. Workers cannot choose an independent union to represent them in the workplace, and the law does not protect workers' right to strike. The government continued to monitor, harass, detain, arrest, and imprison journalists, writers, activists, and defense lawyers and their families, many of whom were seeking to exercise their rights under the law.[34]

Execution Controversy

In December 2009, China executed a man named Akmal Shaikh for drug smuggling. There is evidence that Shaikh was mentally ill, but he was not given a psychological exam of any sort before the trial. He was not given an examination because the Chinese government declared that neither Shaikh or his family could prove he was mentally ill through documentation or family history. The British government made many requests for clemency, including at an eleventh-hour meeting with the Chinese ambassador, but they were consistently ignored.[35]

Further reading

  • Barnouin, Barbara, and Yu Changgen. Zhou Enlai: A Political Life (2005) excerpt and text search
  • Baum, Richard D. "'Red and Expert': The Politico-Ideological Foundations of China's Great Leap Forward," Asian Survey, Vol. 4, No. 9 (Sep., 1964), pp. 1048-1057 in JSTOR
  • Becker, Jasper. Hungry Ghosts: China's Secret Famine (1996), on the "Great Leap Forward" of 1950s
  • Chang, Jung and Jon Halliday. Mao: The Unknown Story, (2005), 814 pages, ISBN 0-679-42271-4
  • Dittmer, Lowell. China's Continuous Revolution: The Post-Liberation Epoch, 1949-1981 (1989) online free
  • Dietrich, Craig. People's China: A Brief History, 3d ed. (1997), 398pp excerpt and text search
  • Kirby, William C., ed. Realms of Freedom in Modern China. (2004). 416 pp.
  • Kirby, William C.; Ross, Robert S.; and Gong, Li, eds. Normalization of U.S.-China Relations: An International History. (2005). 376 pp.
  • Li, Xiaobing. A History of the Modern Chinese Army (2007) excerpt and text search
  • MacFarquhar, Roderick and Fairbank, John K., eds. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 15: The People's Republic, Part 2: Revolutions within the Chinese Revolution, 1966-1982. Cambridge U. Press, 1992. 1108 pp.
  • Meisner, Maurice. Mao's China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, 3rd ed. (Free Press, 1999), dense book with theoretical and political science approach. excerpt and text search
  • Spence, Jonatham. Mao Zedong (1999) excerpt and text search
  • Shuyun, Sun. The Long March: The True History of Communist China's Founding Myth (2007)
  • Wang, Jing. High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng's China (1996) complete text online free
  • Wenqian, Gao. Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary (2007) excerpt and text search

Cultural Revolution, 1966-76

  • Clark, Paul. The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History (2008), a favorable look at artistic production excerpt and text search
  • Esherick, Joseph W.; Pickowicz, Paul G.; and Walder, Andrew G., eds. The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History. (2006). 382 pp. excerpt and text search
  • Jian, Guo; Song, Yongyi; and Zhou, Yuan. Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. (2006). 433 pp.
  • MacFarquhar, Roderick and Fairbank, John K., eds. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 15: The People's Republic, Part 2: Revolutions within the Chinese Revolution, 1966-1982. Cambridge U. Press, 1992. 1108 pp.
  • MacFarquhar, Roderick and Michael Schoenhals. Mao's Last Revolution. (2006).
  • MacFarquhar, Roderick. The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. Vol. 3: The Coming of the Cataclysm, 1961-1966. (1998). 733 pp.
  • Yan, Jiaqi and Gao, Gao. Turbulent Decade: A History of the Cultural Revolution. (1996). 736 pp.

See also

References

  1. https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-chinese-communist-party-is-sinking-like-the-titanic-but-officials-have-a-plan_3382776.html
  2. For primary sources and details see "Record of Historic Richard Nixon-Zhou Enlai Talks in February 1972 Now Declassified"
  3. https://sinoinsider.com/2018/10/the-world-is-trapped-in-red-chinas-matrix/
  4. Christians under Attack in China, By Frederick W. Stakelbeck Jr., FrontPage Magazine, January 25, 2007.
  5. https://freebeacon.com/national-security/chinese-embassy-in-france-tweets-quickly-deletes-anti-semitic-imagery/
  6. “How the Chinese Communist Party Persecuted Christians” (in Chinese). 1958. Cited in Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, Part 3.
  7. Xueguang Zhou and Liren Hou, "Children of the Cultural Revolution: the State and the Life Course in the People's Republic of China." American Sociological Review 1999 64(1): 12-36. Issn: 0003-1224 in Jstor
  8. Jonathan Unger, "Cultural Revolution Conflict in the Villages." China Quarterly 1998 (153): 82-106. Issn: 0305-7410 in Jstor ; Andrew G. Walder, and Yang Su, "The Cultural Revolution in the Countryside: Scope, Timing and Human Impact." China Quarterly 2003 (173): 74-99. Issn: 0305-7410
  9. Patricia Powell, and Joseph Wong, "Propaganda Posters from the Chinese Cultural Revolution." Historian 1997 59(4): 776-793. Issn: 0018-2370 in EBSCO
  10. http://www.cnd.org/HYPLAN/yawei/june4th/
  11. http://www.stoporganharvesting.org/business-of-organ-harvesting/
  12. https://chinatribunal.com/
  13. https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2019/4/15/176497.html
  14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gfN2_uOvTM
  15. https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1148671/download
  16. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10281
  17. https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale
  18. https://twitter.com/HKstreetart/status/1196483549492391937/photo/1
  19. Loh, Christine, "Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong" Second Edition.
  20. https://www.iuhrdf.org/uyghurs
  21. Tibet: Proving Truth from Facts
  22. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/05/201253192951400741.html
  23. http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/18/obama.dalailama/index.html CNN
  24. 24.0 24.1 FlorCruz, Jaime, CNN Beijing Bureau Chief (February 18, 2010). "Analysis: Why the Dalai Lama angers China". Cable News Network website/World/Asia Pacific.
  25. Hillary Clinton: Chinese human rights secondary to economic survival, Richard Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 20 Feb 2009.
  26. Clinton wraps Asia trip by asking China to buy US debt, Breitbart.com, Feb 22 2009.
  27. Analysis: Why the Dalai Lama angers China, Jaime FlorCruz, CNN Beijing Bureau Chief, February 18, 2010.
  28. The CCP murderers were he alleged "agrarian reformers" the New York Times and Secretary of State George Marshall spoke of.
  29. Mao: The Real Story by Alexander P. Pantsov with Steven I. Levine, pg. 472
  30. Yixin Chen, "Cold War Competition and Food Production in China, 1957-1962," Agricultural History 2009 83(1): 51-78,
  31. William A. Joseph, "A Tragedy of Good Intentions: Post-mao Views of the Great Leap Forward." Modern China 1986 12(4): 419-457. Issn: 0097-7004 in Jstor
  32. http://www.ninecommentaries.com/english-3
  33. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9929619/Xi-Jinping-elected-Chinas-president-Telegraph-dispatch.html
  34. See U.S. State Department, 2008 Human Rights Report: China (includes Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau) Feb. 25, 2009
  35. https://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-britain-china30-2009dec30,0,4153003.story

External links