The bold claim was made by the Communists in 1950 that corruption under the Red regime had become a thing of the past. A scant two years later, this same regime is so deeply mired in corruption that even the Communist leaders have to admit that "investigations" and "anti-corruption campaigns" have met with little success.
In December, 1951, Po I-po, head of the Communist Austerity Inspection Committee, reported that more than 1,670 corrupt persons had been exposed in 27 public agencies. Identified as the most heinous offenders were Communications Chief Chang Wen-en, Secret Police Chief Sung Teh-Kuei, and Tientsin Party Headquarters Chief Chang Tse-shan.
On January 9, 1952, Communist Premier Chou En-lai himself admitted, at a mammoth meeting attended by 3,200 representatives from all walks of life, that the anti-corruption campaign inaugurated by Mao Tse-tung last December had not achieved the degree of success anticipated. In words that implied a threat and a warning, he appealed to the entire nation "to heed the order of Mao Tse-tung to wipe out the last vestiges of this evil inherent in the old society."
The evidence is obvious, two short years after the setting up of the Communist regime, that many Communist Party members have come to love the better things in life and to have reconciled themselves to the capitalist way of living. A cursory glance over Communist newspapers during the past three or four months cannot fail to bring home the fact that, despite its vaunted discipline, the communist regime is hopelessly riddled with corruption and impoverished by waste.
A report issued in December, 1951 by the Kwangtung Postal & Telegraphic Administration, a report typical of hundreds of reports issued by other Communist agencies, reveals that the Toishan and Suncheung post offices had failed to account for JMP140,500,000 between January, 1950 and February, 1951. The same report states that 69 per cent of the workers employed by the two post offices had a finger in the corruption pie.
The discovery of corruption and the resultant scandal led the above-mentioned Administration to organize three "investigation teams" in July, 1951 to inspect all other post offices under its jurisdiction. According to "preliminary findings," Huang Wei-tse, Director of the Shihchiao Post Office, was found guilty of having pocketed JMP10,000,000 by padding the payroll. Liu Shao-chow, Director of the Chungshan Telegraph Office, had helped himself to JMP15,000,000 public money, while Tang Kuo-sun, an employee of the Kongmoon Post Office, had enriched himself to the tune of JMP100, 000,000 at public expense. The culprits, according to a report, have already been brought to trial and given their just deserts.
Other official Communist reports indicate that corruption, far from being confined to financial and economic circles alone, has wormed its way into military organizations and the army as well. At a meeting called by the Military Committee of the South China Area in December, 1951, it was reported that it had become a general practice among military personnel to resort to corruption and misappropriation of public funds. It was the consensus of opinion at the meeting that corruption was largely due to the fact that following the Communist military successes in 1948 and 1949, many officers and men had cultivated a fondness for capitalist pleasures and that after years of austere living, they had come to enjoy the better things in life.
It is significant to note that the above-cited cases, far from being a product of the imagination, were actually culled from "official" and "reliable" Communist reports and newspapers. The seriousness of the problem may be gauged by the fact that a special article by Mao Tse-tung condemning corruption and waste was published by the Peking People's Daily on December 21, 1951. That this article was played up by newspapers throughout China suggests that Mao Tse-tung himself must have been more than a little worried over the problem.
It is generally agreed that the Chinese Communist regime, like other dictatorships, exists by virtue of its iron-clad discipline. We may, therefore, take some comfort in the thought that when its much-vaunted discipline fails to stand up to the test, the Chinese Communists will find it increasingly difficult to impose their wills on the people and that corruption may eventually bring about the downfall of the Communist regime.
Universities on the Mainland Heading for Extinction
On the Chinese mainland universities are headed for extinction, and students have already become servants of the Communist regime with no choice of what they will do after graduation.
In place of universities, a host of technical and political training schools is being set up. These are dedicated to filling the needs not of students but of the regime.
Professor Shih Chia-yang, head of the engineering school of Tsinghua University, put it this way, according to a New China News Agency dispatch: "…universities must be turned into cadre training schools."
Already, university graduates are required to work for the Communists. Red China's Premier Chou En-lai made that clear in his October 1st promulgation of the "Decision on the Reform of the Education System." In it he clearly stated: Work for graduates from institutions of higher education shall be allocated by the government."
Since Red China's needs for educated personnel are enormous - especially people with a technical education - informed Chinese circles in Hongkong believe that youths going to Red China from abroad for their education would probably not be permitted to leave after graduation. These sources feel they would be allowed to leave Red China only to do Party work in their overseas home areas - not to work for themselves or their families.
But Red China's new education system means far more than complete control of university graduates. The universities themselves are being destroyed, these sources state.
This is being done to turn out quantities of technical personnel in a hurry. According to New China News Agency. "… in the next five or six years, China's education institutions are required to train some 150,000 to 200,000 top level technicians in the spheres of industry, agriculture, transport and medicine to meet the growing needs of national reconstruction."
To do this, the Chinese Reds are setting up one to two years specialized courses instead of allowing students to get a full education. Chien Chun-jui, Communist China's Vice Minister of education, has said: "We should especially...strive vigorously to promote short-term specialized education." This appeared in the November 1st issue of Peking's official journal, Hsueh Hsi. Many other top Communists have said the same thing.
Chinese educators in Hongkong pointed out that in this the Chinese Reds are merely following Russia's lead. A doctor or an engineer or an economist cannot be trained in one or two years, they explained.
But, they pointed out, Chinese engineers will probably not be taught how to build an entire bridge. Some will learn how to build a foundation. Others will be taught to build the superstructure, etc. The same applies to medicine and other skills for which students usually attend universities.
The effect of this on Chinese universities will be to make them inadequate training schools. Their technical departments, according to announced Communist plans, will be merged with technical departments of other schools.
This happened in Shanghai where a textile institute was formed by merging one technical university with the special departments of two others, according to the official Communist Chien Fang Jih Pao.
Eventually, this will leave only such departments as literature and history in the universities. And the Communists have made it plain that such departments are to be used entirely for thought training of future Red cadres.
Under Mao Tse-tung's new education system, students will not be able to get an education they can use outside of Red China, and if they go to Red China for their education, they probably will never get home again.
Chinese Communists Seek to End Private Business
Four broad categories of private trade in Red China are scheduled for elimination soon, according to the pro-Communist Economic Review, which is published in Hongkong.
This apparently is part of a plan of the Communist regime to take over all wholesale and most retail business in Red China. Such a program was privately revealed by reliable business sources in Canton and Shanghai several months ago. They understood it would cover a three-year period, beginning in 1952.
The four categories black-listed in the Review were:
(1) Middlemen and firms of a similar nature, (2) distribution agents, (3) dealers in luxury goods, and (4) dealers in "superstitious" goods.
The Review, which often reflects semi-official policy on such matters, also advised dealers in cotton, cotton yarn, cotton cloth, rawhide, hog bristles, and timber to close down immediately. The so-called government already was the chief dealer in these materials, it stated, and private firms were therefore now superfluous.
The constant growth of cooperatives, it stated, was rapidly eliminating private dealers in such other basic commodities as rice, flour, firewood, and edible oils. It added that this trend would continue.
In another article in the same issue, the Review told import-export firms to abandon hopes of trading with the West. Instead, it urged them to support the Communist "great policy of trading with the USSR" and its satellites.
Almost 80 per cent of Red China's foreign trade is now with Soviet bloc nations, it said. And because this trade is conducted by governments, instead of by private firms, the Review pointed out that private importers and exporters had no future on the China mainland.
The Review reported that, in line with the Communist policy, about 800 firms representing 30 different business fields in Canton will immediately be organized into syndicates. The syndicates, which are Communist-controlled, will consolidate and control them, it said.
Dealers in fish, salted fish, pork, beef, eggs, vegetables, firewood and charcoal, it reported, will also be organized under syndicates. The Review charged such dealers with being naturally feudalistic and said their ways of conducting business "will be changed."
Communist Extortion Drive Hits New Peak
An overseas Chinese resident of Hongkong said in an interview in Hongkong recently that after having paid ransom six times amounting to JMP100,000,000 (about HK$25,000) to the Chinese Communists for the release of his wife, he had received a seventh demand for money.
A native of Toishan, Li Huai-wen, is only one of many victims of the extortion drive currently pushed by the Communists in Kwangtung. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Szeyi residents in Hongkong recently met to discuss ways to counteract the extortions.
Other Kwangtung county organizations recently held similar meetings in Hongkong. The meetings are usually kept secret for fear of Communist reprisals against relatives still on the mainland. These groups estimated that more than 60 per cent of the overseas Chinese residents of Southeast Asia, with families still in Red China, have received ransom notes. But those living in the United States, they said, are hardest hit.
Despite earlier Communist promises to take good care of the families of overseas Chinese, the Communist extortion program recently reached a new intensity, they stated. Many hostages of the Rees are reliably reported to have committed suicide "to end it once and for all."
Yeh Chung-fah, owner of a native banking house in Hongkong, said in an interview that he was asked to pay ransoms for the release of his married sister and mother-in-law. But, Yeh later learned, the two women killed themselves shortly after the money was sent.
Lu Kuo-cheng, manager of a laundry in Hongkong, recently received letters from his sister-in-law in Toishan asking for JMP36,000,000 and enough money to buy 380 piculs of rice. The Reds demanded this, she wrote, before they would release his 73-year-old mother from jail. While he was trying to get the money, L u received another letter from his sister-in-law explaining that his mother had hanged herself and that she herself was being held by the Communists pending the payment of ransom.
The Szeyi Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Hongkong asserted that 80 per cent of the 3,000,000 Szeyi population are families or relatives of overseas Chinese. It is feared that practically everyone in Szeyi will eventually be victimized by Communist extortion.
Buddhists on Hainan Forbidden to Worship
The Chinese Reds are carrying out a relentless campaign to destroy the deeply rooted Buddhist faith of the people on Hainan, according to a recent visitor to Hongkong.
In an interview in Hongkong, he said that at least 35 of the more important monks on Hainan were executed without trial of any kind. About 50,000 others, he said, were put to forced labor, repairing airfields, building roads, working on Yulin's dockyards, etc.
Hainan's two most famous temples, Wen Chang and Chun Shan, built in the Tang Dynasty, are now used by the Rees as administrative buildings. The 500 monks who served in them, he said, are among those now doing forced labor.
The other temples on the island, he stated, have in effect been closed by a Communist order forbidding worship in them. However, many people still secretly practise their faith at home.
He said at least 100 Buddhist nuns on the island committed suicide rather than give in to Communist demands that they return to the laity. Nuns, he explained, are put through five-month indoctrination courses intended to destroy their Buddhist faith.
The Reds have made a special point of trying to win over young nuns. He said about 7,000 of them under the age of 25 are today at indoctrination camps in Hoikow, Yulin, Wenchong and Tsengfan.
Among the nuns under the age of 20, this source felt, the Communists have met with some success. He said he knew of some in this age group who married after indoctrination. Others, he stated, actually became Party cadres.
The Communists class all Buddhist - monks, nuns or simply believers - as counter-revolutionaries on Hainan, he stated. Today, nobody dares reveal his faith. All Buddhist publications are banned, as are such articles of worship as incense sticks and red candles.