The History and Anatomy of Communist China's Tactical Masquerades.
On the eve of the "national day" of the Chinese Communist regime, Yeh Chien ying, chairman of the "national people's congress," announced a "policy on carrying out China's peaceful reunification." Of this now well-known "proposal's" nine points, the most important is to "hold talks between the Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang of China on a reciprocal basis" so that the two parties "will cooperate for the third time."
Dr. James Soong, Government Spokesman of the Republic of China, characterized this announcement as another Chinese Communist united front ploy - a shopworn platitude without new substance. Many experts have expressed their views, as seen in recent newspaper accounts, to the effect that China should be reunited under Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People, and that the Chinese Communist "offer" is simply "united front" chicanery.
The dangers in a "united front" are likely to be overlooked by ordinary citizens because they have heard the jargon too often. The Chinese Communists' two-handed tactic of "united front" and "armed struggle" have been in alternate use over many years as a strategy for Communist survival and development. The ultimate objective is to exterminate the enemy. The "united front" tactic is implemented by camouflage, infiltration and other devious means intended to lure opponents into a trap. It is intended to bring endless further tragedy to the Chinese people. This is to say that "united front" is a much more malicious tactic than armed struggle.
The late President Chiang Kai-shek once pointed out: "In essence, united front is a 'project of political murder' ingeniously engineered by the Chinese Communist party in accordance with the need of its struggle. Its objective is to use its secondary enemies to defeat its primary enemy, and then destroy the enemies they have united with." This succinct analysis reaches the heart of the matter.
Whenever the Chinese Communists are cornered, they resort to the "united front" tactic and clamor for peace talks. We must always keep in mind this bitter lesson of past years. I want to tell the world how deceitful and irrational the Chinese Communist party proved during its past "cooperation" with the Kuomintang.
• The first "united front" move
The Chinese Communist party was founded in Shanghai in 1921 under the direction of the Moscow Comintern. It doped China's young scholars with Marxist-Leninist dogmas and developed its organization by instigating labor unrest. Nevertheless, it had no political status at that time. When it saw the Kuomintang success in overthrowing imperial rule, founding the Republic of China and gaining momentous prestige and influence, the Communist organization wormed its way into the Kuomintang in order to further its own development as a parasite.
In August 1922, the "Second National Congress" of the Chinese Communist party decided to form a "united front" with the Kuomintang. The Communists began joining the Kuomintang - their real purposes were subversive infiltration and division. They went to great lengths to divide Kuomintang members into three parts - a "leftist faction," "centrist faction" and rightist faction." They began to trumpet next for a "left turn" in the national revolution. Following the reorganization of the Kuomintang in 1924 and Dr. Sun Yat-sen's travel to Peiping a short time later, the Chinese Communists organized the spread of rumors in the Kuomintang to sow discord.
In July 1926, while Commander-in-chief Chiang Kai-shek was directing the National Revolutionary Army in the northward march on Nanking, the Chinese Communists established a Soviet government in Wuhan. They armed their Wuhan "labor union" and various peasants associations for an uprising. The Communist killed the landlords, confiscated their land and engineered Red terror throughout the populace. As a result, industrial and agricultural production and business activities were paralyzed. Communists in the ranks of military units contacted British and American consulate officials and churches in the Nanking-Shanghai region in an attempt to engineer a direct clash between the Great Powers and the national revolutionary force. At that time, the flame of Communist insurgency was surging; killing, arson, abduction for ransom and looting were the order of the day. These led to a division of the government into Nanking and Wuhan authorities, to the "Equine day" Incident at Changsha, the Nanchang Uprising and to disorders in many other cities. In May 1927, the Kuomintang Central Committee accepted popular demands to eject the Communists from the party. Communist remnants, after their failure in the "Autumn Harvest Uprising," took refuge at Chingkangshan at the junction of Hunan, Hupeh anc Kiangsi. This was the Chinese Communist party's first "united front," or cooperation, with the Kuomintang.
• The second "united front" move
After their defeat in five suppression campaigns launched by the government, the remnants of the Chinese Communist forces fled to northern Shensi through Yunnan, Kweichow, Szechwan and Sikiang to join indigenous Communist forces under the command of Liu Tzu-tan and Kao Kang. The remnant Communist elements numbered only 5,000. By 1935, they had almost reached the end of their road.
At that time, the Japanese provoked China, engineering incidents everywhere, because they were worried about China's growing strength. The Chinese Communists took advantage of the opportunity afforded by Japanese aggression to demand the National Government allow their "cooperation" to resist the Japanese. They raised this demand in keeping with the Comintern policy to, first, break political encirclement and, second, restore their armed development under the color of peace tactics. In May 1936, the Chinese Communist party wired its request for a "ceasefire and peace talks" and the Communist acceptance of four conditions laid down by the National Government: namely, (1) Support the Three Principles of the People. (2) Subordinate itself to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's command. (3) Integrate the "Red army" into the national forces. (4) Reorganize the "Soviets" into regular provincial governments. When the all-out war against Japan started in 1937, the Chinese Communist party declared its intention "to meet the national crisis together," but it secretly sought to expand its territory and armed force. Its real policy was: "To devote 10 percent of our strength to resisting Japanese aggression, 20 percent to coping with the National Government, and 70 percent to developing Communist strength." In the face of Japanese troop attacks it was reported that the Communist units "run" but never "hit"; but they often launched sneak attacks on National Forces. This explains why during the eight-year war, the strength of the National Forces waned while that of the Communists waxed.
Then, to the surprise of the world, Moscow in May 1943 announced the dissolution of the Com intern. This was an international "united front" conspiracy to gain British and American sympathy by pretending to cooperate sincerely with the United States and other countries of the world. From that time, the Chinese Communist party claimed to be a "democratic party" representing the Chinese peasants and to be a party of "agrarian reformers." At the same time, the Communist party of the United States changed its name to the Communist Political Association, a masking move which helped prepare U.S. public opinion to believe that their cousin Chinese Communists were pulling their weight in the war. The U.S. press was induced to portray "freedom and democracy" and "happiness and progress" in northern Shensi under "agrarian reform" and "new democracy. "
In 1944, the Chinese Communists handed over the Nationalist Chinese government's war plan to Japanese forces in an attempt to draw Japanese troops info attacks on the Chinese government bastions in Szechwan and Kweichow in coordination with Chinese Communist assaults. This was indeed treason. Before Gen. Joseph Stilwell arrived in China for service, he was influenced by Chinese Communist propaganda fed through U.S. and Chinese Communists and fellow travelers. Thereafter, Sino-American wartime cooperation was hindered.
At the end of World War II, the Communists' Lin Piao organized his troops under the umbrella of Russian force, and began to dictate to northeastern China. At this time, the international Communists developed a propaganda campaign to the effect that the Chinese National Government was pursuing civil war and posing a threat to world peace. As the government needed to secure international understanding and assure cooperation from its allies, it endured Communist attacks and enlarged insurgency; international mediation and political consultation in that year encouraged an atmosphere of appeasement, in perfect line with the Chinese Communists' tactic of using neutrality as a cover. Under the camouflage of democracy and neutrality, the Chinese Communists stepped up their military and infiltration activities, undermined the anti-Communist force and, in the end, destroyed the government's policy of mobilization to suppress the insurgency. So, this Communist propaganda logic was more effective in the destruction of the government of the Republic of China than direct Chinese Communist action. The cooperative attitude, the dovish smiles, and the four promises of the Chinese Communists together with Mao Tse-tung's pledges of "solidarity forever, cooperation sincerely and unification thoroughly" made in the early years of the War of Resistance - all were, in the ending years of the war, turned into the capital of all-out insurrection and subversion. Mainland China was shut behind the Iron Curtain. This was the story of the Chinese Communists' second "united front" move (the so-called second cooperation between the Chinese Communist party and the Kuomintang).
• The third "united front" move
The government and people suffered tragically in both instances of Chinese Communist "united front" cooperation. Now that Yeh Chien-ying has advanced a proposal for a "the third-time cooperation," he seems to have given little thought to world remembrance of the history and results of the previous two moves. An ancient saying has it: "If one is too much, how can there be a second." The substance of the tactic has not changed an iota; we cannot allow the capture of Taiwan by another "united front."
As Yeh Chien-ying noted in his overture, the Chinese mainland is again in a very critical state. Over more than 30 years, the Chinese Communists have controlled the people's lives and every movement with purges, struggles, people's communes, travel permits, and food and cloth coupons. As a result the situation of the people is "poor and bleak," and the entire mainland has been brought under darkness. Leading cadres such as Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao and Kao Kang, who went through thick and thin with Mao Tse-tung and were lauded as close comrades in arms, were killed. More than 70 million so-called "democratic cultural figures," were used as tools, and innocent people were tyrannized and killed. Those who survived lived like animals.
On the other side of that coin, the Communist cadres now still in power at all levels, continue to squeeze the people, indulge in extravagance and engage in endless strife for personal power and profit. It is said that crass stupidity, corruption and tyranny are the three lethal woes of the Chinese Communists. I agree.
The Chinese Communists fly the "united front" flag again because they seek to survive their internal instability, divert the attention of the world and undermine the spiritual defense of our compatriots at home and abroad; they want to create the false image of an "easing of tension" in the Taiwan Straits in order to forestall the U.S. sale of weapons to the Republic of China.
The facts show that the 32-year Communist rule on the Chinese mainland has been fiasco. To be sure, this is due to Chinese Communist ignorance and inability, but its root cause is the fact that Communism is not suited to China. It is against Chinese nature and civilization. China can never advance along the ruinous Communist road. The Communist regime can never be tolerated in a united China. The unification of China requires the termination of Communist rule and the re-establishment of a democratic and free system based on the Three Principles of the People.
Premier Sun Yun-suan has reiterated on a number of occasions that the future of China's reunification must be decided on the basis of a democratic constitution. The confrontation across the Taiwan Straits is not merely a rivalry between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist party. It was brought about, instead, by sharply different principles and systems; there is no room for reconciliation or compromise. The only way for the Chinese Communists to escape the hatred and repudiation of the Chinese people is to repudiate Communism and proletarian dictatorship, adopt the Three Principles of the People and learn from us the substantive experiences of all kinds of development - development launched for the benefit of the people on this bastion of national revival.
Our political goal is to establish a free, democratic and unified China for all Chinese people. The government of the Republic of China has categorically announced time and again that it will never hold any form of talks with the Chinese Communists. The government takes China's reunification as its aspiration and responsibility; but the only way to reach it is to implement the Three Principles of the People in the whole country so that our 900 million compatriots on the mainland will share with us a free, democratic, peaceful, happy and prosperous life. Thus, "peace talks" are not the way to carry out the great enterprise of China's reunification and to end the tragic division of the Chinese people. Instead, the Chinese Communists must cast aside Communism, identify themselves with the Republic of China and rally behind the "flag of the white sun and blue sky."
Since the Chinese Communists have now confirmed the historic significance of the 1911 Revolution, they should immediately and publicly renounce Communism and dedicate themselves to the Three Principles of the People. They must replace their Russian-type political system with democratic, constitutional rule. They must adopt the constitution of the Republic of China and its guidelines and policies for reunification of China under the Three Principles of the People. In response to the points made by Dr. James Soong as Government Spokesman of the Republic of China, they must discard their so-called "four firm principles" - the "socialist road," "proletarian dictatorship," "Communist party's leader ship," and "Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tse-tung thought" - which have been repudiated by the Chinese people but persisted in by the Communists.
President Chiang Ching-kuo once announced to the world: "Negotiating with the Communists is tantamount to suicide. What free world country has ever successfully done so? Negotiations are a means the Communists use to defeat their enemies. We can't forget this because when we were on the mainland we tried some negotiation with the Communists. The more we negotiated, the more setbacks we suffered. Never, even under the most difficult circumstances, will we negotiate with them again. This is the most fundamental policy of the Republic of China."
This passage is brief and to the point, and I use it in concluding this statement. For whatever conditions the Chinese Communists may offer, people of the nation must be determined to safeguard what we have enjoyed and enlarge what we have achieved. We need not pay too much attention to how people in the world may look at us. As long as we work hard and score successes, others will naturally reckon with us and respect us. With this, I counsel myself and the people of the whole country.
Regime totters onward
Ailing officials draw criticism
A number of high-ranking Red Chinese officials - all unidentified - were strongly criticized during a recent top level Peiping meeting that gunned for those who favor liberalization of the regime, People's Daily reported.
In recent weeks similar attacks have been made against other members of the party and civilian and military officials. One of the problems is that none of Red China's aging controllers is in good health. "Vice chairman" Yeh Chien-ying is particularly frail.
The reports describe the physical condition of the top Communist figures as follows:
Yeh, 83, cannot walk without the help of "human crutches". In addition to signs of senility, he suffers from a bad heart and hypertension.
"Vice chairman" Teng Hsiao-ping, 78, suffers hypertension and regularly takes medicine to control a deteriorating liver.
"Vice chairman" Chen Yun, 83, suffers from lung disease. His digestive system is also in poor condition.
"Vice chairman" Li Hsien-nien, 75, has visibly aged recently. He regularly takes medicines to control hypertension.
"Chairman" Hu Yao-pang, 68, suffers from a liver ailment and low blood pressure. His poor health makes him short-tempered.
"Premier" Chao Tzu-yang, 62, also has an ill-functioning liver, and his eyesight is poor. He has been described as neurotic.
Youths protest
Unemployment plagues mainland
While unemployment plagues Communist China as a whole, the already critical problem, particularly in Shanghai, is getting worse each year, according to the London Financial Times.
Tony Walker, who was in Shanghai recently, reported in a dispatch from Peiping that several hundred thousand middle school graduates pour onto the labor market each year.
This is compounded by hundreds of thousands of young men who, scattered across the China mainland under Mao Tse-tung's rustification program, want to return to their homes in Shanghai, he said.
While some have been allowed to return, the report said, there are a great many others who have been prevented from doing so.
By means of demonstrations and even staging fasts, these disaffected youths bring constant pressure to bear on local "officials" where they live and work, on "central authorities" in Peiping and on the Shanghai municipality, it said.
After asking to be taken to a typical labor office, Walker said, he was shown a "model" bureau where there was virtually no unemployment problem. However, officials admitted under questioning, that this area was privileged by Shanghai standards, the report said.
Red recipe
Soup for all
A mainland housewife went to the market to buy mutton. She picked one fatty chunk after another without actually buying any. She returned home with both hands greasy. She washed her hands in clean water to cook a large pot of soup.
Smiling with satisfaction, she said to herself: "I didn't spend a single cent. The soup is enough for the whole family."
The husband returned home just then. He was angry. "Why didn't you wash your hands in the water tank so that the soup would last several days?" he asked.
A Communist cadre, after finding out what they were arguing about, said glumly: "Both of you are muddle headed. Pour the pot into the public well and the whole village will have soup to drink." -a popular story from mainland China.
Ambition dies
Labor discontent
Labor discontent in mainland China is growing stronger, which has led Chinese and foreigners to wonder whether it will pose a threat to the Communist regime, according to an American journalist.
Reporter Michele Nink, who is currently based in Canton, Kwang tung Province, says many of the 100 million urban workers on the mainland remain unhappy despite changes introduced since the downfall of the "Gang of Four" in 1976. He gives two examples.
Hsiao Huang, a 28-year-old worker at a wireless electronic factory in Kwanchow, wants to work very hard so that he can earn a bonus in addition to his monthly wage of about US$23. But his 700 colleagues rarely put in more than six hours a day. As a result, when he finishes his part of the work in half the time allotted to it, he has nothing else to do. His chance of getting a bonus disappears.
Huang's girl friend, Shu Chen, also feels depressed. She works at a Canton bus stop as a "water girl," taking hot water for tea from one container and pouring it into another across the courtyard. She says: "Sometimes when I think about my situation, I feel like killing myself."
Reporter Nink says the loss of potential to exert effort cannot be measured only in wasted production, but also in the thwarted ambitions and empty future of millions of workers like Hsiao Huang and Shu Chen.
Mainland
Hear no evil
How can you put one billion people in paper bags? Not through lack of effort, as far as mainland China is concerned. Peiping wants to keep foreign tourist and business dollars coming in, but to keep foreigners away from the people at large. Foreigners in Peiping are restricted to living in special compounds, notes the Wall Street Journal. This and other restrictions separate them from negative information about life on the mainland and keep foreign ideas from an already restless population. A sudden about face to close all foreign travel agencies - only recently welcomed with open arms - underlines Peiping's determination to manipulate foreign visitors. Foreign students and scientists have complained bitterly about the isolation.
Peiping's tactics were signaled by its arrests earlier this year of 22 known political dissidents. The 22 are the tip of an iceberg among a vast, unreported victimized population, most of whom will never see a foreign reporter or a foreign tourist.
People's Daily, complaining of a crisis of confidence, warned against writings exposing the dark side of mainland life. Every organ of the Peiping regime continues the abuse of Pai Hua, author of the screen play “ Bitter Love.” The crescendo of attacks on the one man screens the thousands of other writers now undergoing intimidation. Should others stand up, or the vitriol inflame one or another warring communist faction, then a new “cultural revolution” may suddenly replace the shadows which now flicker on the empty Maoist stage.
U. S. Harvard-trained sociologist Robert Gold, writing in the publication Asia Mail following his return from a study tour on mainland China, re ported the basis for Peiping's hypertension . It is the alienation and cynicism of young people in the cities. They are turned off by the constant Chinese Communist upheavals and ideological flip-flops, but above all by thirty year of economic and cultural failure. The familiar rhetoric of Communist manipulation no longer reaches youth, as Teng Hsiao-ping pushes the buttons again and again in a race against time to forestall the resurgence of the "Mao" faction.
Cadres told
Beware of Students
A wall poster appearing on a college campus in Canton called on the Chinese Communist regime to surrender to the Republic of China, according to an "official" publication of the Chinese Communist party.
The poster appeared on the eve of the Republic of China' national day at the South China Engineering College, reported the Tang Nei Tung Hsin, which is circulated only among party cadre.
The poster read in part: "It's useless to lure Taiwan with united front slogans. It's far better to summon courage, take down the shingle and surrender to the Republic of China. Both the country and the people would benefit. To be able to admit one' mistakes and correct them is also a commendable act."
The crisis of confidence among students and the corruption of cadres have given birth to the most serious crises in the party's history, the publication declared.
Commenting on the abuse of power among party cadres, the publication said 95 percent of the top leader and 60 percent of the middle ranking cadres have sent their children abroad for study or to fill the regime' posts overseas.
Lower-echelon cadre, who do not have enough clout to secure overseas assignments for their children, are doing everything possible to enrich themselves, the publication said.
Followers of Teng
Lonely and Scorned
Communist Chinese who follow "vice chairman" Teng Hsiao-ping's policies often find themselves isolated, ostracized and scorned, People's Daily complains.
"Those who carry out the policies, principles and political line laid down since the party's third plenum cannot win support," People's Daily said in a front page editorial.
Teng has been Communist China's most powerful official since the party's third plenum in December 1978, when rival Hua Kuo-feng was undercut and Teng's modernization policy was stamped on the party.
But nearly three years later, the Mao loyalists, who outnumber Teng's men, are stalling initiatives handed down from the top through passive resistance, foot dragging and other rear guard techniques.
Rather than winning support, Teng’s men "land themselves in isolation instead," the newspaper said.
"Those who adhere to principles, dare to speak the truth and dare to undertake criticism are discriminated against and suffer ostracism," it said.
In a separate article, the newspaper described the plight of a professor identified only by his surname, Wang, who won a state prize in 1972 for inventing a horizontal centrifugal machine.
The machine was more modern than its Western equivalents but it aroused the jealousy of Wang's superiors who were not as educated as he and presumably came to power during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.
Wang was the subject of a whisper campaign and was so depressed that he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
Although Teng's men have secured the party's top jobs, the middle and lower ranks are still held by uneducated peasants, workers and soldiers who were given party jobs during Mao's egalitarian era.
"Some of our party members are not qualified," Teng said in a front page treatise in People's Daily. "Those members admitted into the party during the sway of the ultra-leftist line and who have not received party education cannot become models for the people."
Western diplomats say Communist China's attempt to modernize is being hamstrung by the Maoist holdouts.
A fable for all time
The fox and tiger
When the Kingdom of Ch'u was at the peak of its power, King Hsung-wang had the uncomfortable feeling that when his people hailed him, it was more for General Tsao Hsi-hun than himself, and the kings and envoys of other lands seemed to honor and fear General Tsao more, too. He mentioned it to his minister, Kiang-I, one day.
"With Your Majesty's permission," said Kiang-I, bowing low, "I'd like to tell a story:
"There was once a hungry tiger hunting food on a mountain. He saw a fox in a thick bush. Without much ado, he caught it and was about to tear it up with his teeth when he heard the fox shouting: 'Hey! Stop! Right now! ' The tiger was astonished at hearing such words from the tiny captive and so stopped biting. 'Don't you know you are no longer the king of the forest?' asked the little fox. 'The Emperor of Heaven has made me the king! If you harm me, you'll be punished by Heaven.'
" 'What nonsense are you talking about?' growled the tiger, looking at the fox with amusement.
"The wily fox, however, sensed the tiger's doubts so he pointed his paw straight at the tiger's nose and said: 'Do you want me to prove to you that I am the king of animals, and not you? Come, follow me and see for yourself how all the other animals fear me.'
"The little fox swaggered along with the tiger following close behind. At the sight, all the beasts in the forest ran away.
" 'Ha, now you see,' said the fox, strutting along even more nonchalantly than before.
"The tiger looked at the fox unbelievingly, but he turned and hurried away. It never occurred to the tiger that he, himself, had frightened the animals away."
King Hsun-wang could not help smiling at his foolishness in thinking that his people and other kingdoms honored and feared his general and not himself.
HU CHIA HU WEI (The fox uses the intimidation of the tiger) has been used as a satire against those who use other people's power and influence for personal gain. e.g. You should see a high official, not the underlings.
No Tigers
Peiping's pet 'parties'
Below are Red China's own descriptions of what it terms the political "opposition parties" on the mainland. It holds these out as models, presumably, for non-Communist political parties in a re-united China.
Peiping claims eight "non-Communist" parties in main land China today: "Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang, China Democratic League, China Democratic National Construction Association, China Association for Promoting Democracy, Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party, China Public Interest Party, Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League and September 3 Party."
Their membership consists mainly of "former Kuomintang officials, former capitalists, overseas Chinese returnees, scientists, educators, writers, artists, lawyers and other intellectuals," says Peiping.
Once every two months, a conference is held in Peiping by representatives of the Communist party and the eight other "parties," purportedly "to discuss various opinions regarding government policies and their implementation."
Activities of the eight "opposition parties" are described as follows:
The "Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party" is described as being composed of doctors and other professionals in the medical and health sector. It organizes courses in medicine in Peiping and Shanghai.
The "September 3 Party" which mainly comprises university professors and lecturers, has an evening law school in Peiping, while the "China Association for Promoting Democracy" has training courses for teachers in Tientsin.
The "Revolutionary Kuomintang Committee" has a foreign languages institute in Kweilin to train personnel for the tourist trade. "The China Democratic League," made up mainly by "senior intellectuals" including "68 university presidents," has countrywide lecture-tours for members.
The "China Democratic National Construction Association" is organizing "former industrialists and businessmen."
The "Public Interest Party" enrolls returned overseas Chinese, while the "Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League" recruits Taiwanese living on the mainland.
The Peiping regime makes no mention of what the "opposition parties" oppose.
"The Chinese Communist party has helped the democratic parties to take the socialist road, while the democratic parties have been a factor in helping the Communist party foster democracy and strengthen legality," a Peiping official said.
The significance of Peiping's puppet "opposition" parties is not lost on political leaders in Taiwan, who were offered by Peiping such "participation" in a unified all-Communist China.