Never since the Korean War had there been such anti-American hysteria on a mass scale, whipped up by Peiping's skillful propagandists, among the Chinese on the mainland. While their plot to seize Kinmen and force the United States to retreat from the defense perimeter of Western Pacific failed miserably before the eyes of the world, the Chinese Communists nevertheless succeeded in creating a new wave of hostile feelings against America along the hundreds of millions of people under their rigid control and regimentation.
From September to early October, the Communists claimed, 300,000,000 people on the mainland demonstrated against American "imperialism" in one way or another. Characteristically, the Communists used these demonstrations as a stimulant in their exploitation of the people's labor. Newspapers in mainland China devoted a full three quarters of their space for a solid month to report on such "protests against United States' piracy." Workers put in 15 nights' overtime to erect a crude blast furnace. peasants over fulfilled their quota of selling grains to the state, even hens in the new People's Communes laid more eggs-all because they were "incensed by American provocations in the Taiwan Straits."
Uncle Sam was pictured alternately as a monster and a "paper tiger," an "aggressor" and an "imperialist whose days are numbered." Girl textile workers and peasant women took up rifle target practices in addition to 8-hour day schedules. Provincial newspapers screamed: "We beat the Americans in Korea and we could do it again."
An examination of the People's Daily in Peiping, official organ of the Chinese Communist party, easily revealed where all such hysterics were generated:
September 15, commenting on President Eisenhower's television speech to the nation on the Taiwan Straits crisis: "This is a big lie ... This is sheer nonsense .... It would be better for Washington to cast aside, before it is too late, any illusion it may have about U.S. aggression being appeased by others."
September 18: "We declare to the U.S. policy makers: What the U.S. could not obtain during past ambassadorial talks, it will not obtain through its gunboat policy and atomic blackmail. The Chinese people will never abandon their right to liberate Taiwan and the offshore islands."
September 20, statement of "Foreign Minister" Chen Yi on Secretary Dulles' speech a t the United Nations: "The U.S. is playing with fire on the brink of war and attempting to extend its aggression against China. The imminent danger at present in the situation in the Taiwan Straits is that the U.S., ignoring our repeated grave warnings and the strong protest of the people of the world, persists in its armed provocations and war threats against our people."
September 21, editorial entitled "American Bandits, Get Out of Taiwan": "Clear-headed people can see a t a glance that the U.S. aggressors are preoccupied with war. The gentlemen in Washington are just like Chicago gangsters. They have wild illusions of using atomic blackmail to force the Chinese people to give up forever their sacred right of liberating Taiwan and the offshore islands."
September 27, "Vice Premier" Nieh Jung-chen: "If the United States imperialists should be so desperately lunatic as to risk the unleashing of an atomic war, what will be exterminated will be U.S. imperialism itself."
September 28, Chou En-lai: "If the U.S. imperialists insist on provoking war in order to carry out their aggression on Kinmen and Matsu, then the 600 million Chinese people ... will definitely bring the U.S. imperialist aggressive action to final and complete disaster."
September 28, editorial: "The 'ceasefire' proposal (put forth by the U.S. at Geneva) is clearly a premeditated step in the U.S. war plan. It has a dual purpose. If the Chinese people do not accept it, the U.S. will launch an attack against China. If China accepts it, then as soon as the Chinese People's Army rebuts Taiwan's war provocations, the U.S. will take the opportunity to occupy Kinmen and Matsu and launch a war against China at any time."
September 30, on the use of the Sidewinder: "The U.S. aggressors who have instigated the use of guided missiles should know that once they have kindled the fire, they will get themselves burnt. They must repay the debt they have incurred."
October 1, "Defense Minister" Peng The-huai: "The American government is creating tension in the Far East. In defiance of the repeated warnings of our country, it has recently carried out flagrant military maneuverings and concentrated large numbers of armed forces, incessantly infringed on our territorial waters and air space and attempted to put our coastal islands such as Kinmen and Matsu under its armed control and turn them into springboards for aggression against the Chinese mainland. These rabid war provocations have posed a grave menace to peace in the Far East and the whole Asia world."
October 7, Chen Yi: "If the U.S. should interpret the temporary suspension of our bombardment of Kinmen as a sign of weakness, or misinterpret this as meeting its demand for a 'ceasefire,' it will have totally miscalculated. The Chinese people are determined to liberate Taiwan, Kinmen and Matsu. No foreign interference will be tolerated at all.
Peiping played also a numbers game of issuing "serious warnings" against the U.S. on alleged intrusions of U.S. warships into its "territorial waters." From early September to October 12, a total of 34 warnings were pompously issued by the spokesman of the Chinese Communist "foreign ministry."
Everyone A Soldier
To back up its frenzied war cry, Peiping claimed that within a week's time it had organized 120,000,000 men and women into militia units in the "everyone a soldier" movement.
"As the people get more and more angry over U.S. provocations the 'everyone a soldier' movement is spreading in the cities and countryside, even to the remote areas," reported the official New China News Agency. "The militiamen are making strenuous efforts to master military skills in order to defend the motherland while speeding up production at the same time. They say: 'If the American aggressors dare to launch a war, we will drive them into the sea.'''
The campaign was all inclusive and nobody escaped from joining, as evidenced from these reports picked at random:
"All eligible persons in more than 60 hsien and municipalities of Shensi province have joined militia units. In Weinan hsien alone, there are now over 20 militia regiments, 151 battalions, 700 companies and more than 2,000 platoons."
"All men and women between the age of 17 and 40 who are members of people's communes in the 16 hsien of Liuchow District, Kwangsi Chuang Autonomous Region, have already joined the militia."
"Millions of workers, peasants, students, businessmen and other people have already joined militia units in the coastal provinces of Fukien, Kwangtung and Chekiang. 'Fight back any time the enemy dare to attack' is their watchword."
"The militia in Szechwan Province, Southwest China, has increased to 5,000,000."
"In Northeast China, more than one third bf the 18 million people in Heilungkiang Province have joined the militia. The number of militiamen in Liaoning Province increased from 1.3 million to several million in a few days. Training in the use both of rifles and artillery is also going on among the more than ten million militiamen in Kirin Province."
"More than 50 militia divisions, consisting of 700,000 people, have so far been set up in Peiping, with all the students in the universities and colleges enrolled. Thousands more applications are still streaming in daily from workers, government functionaries and people of other walks of life."
"Coastal Shantung, which underwent many trials in wars before liberation, was reported to have enrolled a total of 15 million militiamen. Peasants take arms in one hand and hoes in the other when they go to the fields."
"In Kiangsu Province, 8,400,000 young people are forming militia units, combining production, drilling and study.
25,000 Communes
Everything worked at incredible speed on the Chinese mainland, or so it seemed. Just as the per hectare rice yield claimed by the Chinese Communists this year broke the world record, not by a few percent, but by ten times, so in the short space of less the three months, 90.4 percent of all peasant households on the Chinese mainland had joined people's communes.
By September 30, boasted Peiping, practically all the peasant households had joined people's communes in Honan, Liaoning, Tsing- hai, Hopei, Shensi, Shantung, Heilungkiang and Kirin provinces, the Kwangsi Chuang Autonomous Region, and Peiping and Shanghai. The ratio in Shansi, Kwangtung, Hunan, Szechwan, Kiangsu, Chekiang and Kansu provinces was more than 90 percent, and in Kiangsi, Anhwei, Hupeh and Fukien provinces and Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region it was around 85 percent.
The size of these people's communes could be seen from this analysis: Before the movement began, there were 750,000 agricultural production cooperatives on the mainland. Where all peasants have joined people's communes, they would number from 25,000 to 26,000. There were, by the end of September, 23,384 people's communes, averaging 4,797 peasant households each. A survey of 10 provinces and municipalities showed that of the 5,538 people's communes there, 3,343 have less than 5,000 households each, 1,628 have between 5,000 and 10,000 households, and the remaining 567 have from 10,000 to more than 20,000 households. There were even 94 "country-wide communes" or federations of communes, embodying hundreds of square kilometers of land and tens of thousands of families in Mao's new empire of serfdom.
Just what the communes do to the peasants on the Chinese mainland? Here is an official statement of the New China News Agency: "In general, the people's communes become one with the township. They unify the management of industry, agriculture, exchange, education and military affairs in the area they cover. The members organize their activities with high militancy and live a collective life. According to statistics of 11 provinces and autonomous regions, 1.4 million public service restaurants and 1.2 million infant care groups have been set up, in addition to tailoring groups, laundries and grain processing sections, relieving large number of women of domestic chores."
In people's communes, the centuries-old family system that has been the backbone of Chinese cultural tradition no longer exists. The husband and wife are organized into shock production brigades as well as the elder children. They work from morning till night, eat at public mess halls, and only go back to sleep in their own house. Small children are sent to nursery groups and so called primary and middle schools, where students study half a day and engage in manual labor the other half. No system of slavery in the history of mankind has been so ruthlessly complete, depriving from the people the last vestige of home comfort, privacy and individuality.
Liberation of Women
Women were once again "liberated" on mainland China. They were emancipated by the 1911 revolution, more than a decade before the Chinese Communist party was born. But now, the latter claimed that it had gone back and liberated Chinese women from their homes and sent them into factories and fields.
The September issue of the Hsinhua Bi-monthly ran an article on the people's commune of the Chengchow Textile Machinery Plant. It described how the commune was set up:
"The Plant has 1,300 workers' families with a population of over 10,000 persons, including 1,400 aged between 20 and 50 years old. Some young women, though not versed in any production technique, are physically strong but, handicapped by children, were also confined to their kitchens ....
"They composed the following rhyme to voice their sentiments and hope:
Household chores vex us,
Efforts cannot be exerted,
It is said to be tied to cooking stoves,
How can we move upstream?
Shopping and making threads by twisting,
How can socialism be built more faster, better and more economically?
The general line illuminates our minds,
But nursing children and washing clothes,
We can never be the first to go forward....
"When women did walk out of their houses, even their daughters raised objections. Wu Hsiu-chen is an example. She is over 40, and has seven children. Immediately the commune was set up, she applied for a job in the nursery. She is able to do the job of a barber and is able to bear children's annoyance; thus she is well qualified for the job. But her elder daughter did not agree, saying: 'You have so many children. If you are to earn money to support us, all will be starved.' Mother was angry, saying: 'You young girl are not as progressive as I. The Chinese Communist party emancipates me but you will not emancipate me. You want me to obey and serve you in the house for my whole life.' Her daughter was speechless. Later, she told those in the nursery of how she had struggled against her daughter.
"Like a storm, the people's commune is changing private families left over from the past thousands of years. Chao Hsiu-ying is now superintendent of a hardware factory. Her four elder children are sent to a kindergarten and the youngest is kept in a nursery while her husband eats in a public mess hall. A complete change has taken place in her former family life. Here the big family of socialism takes the place of small families."
So the big family of socialism was born, and the small families died an unnatural death. The change was ordered from above, and women had to leave their families en masse. As early as July, 51,688 nurseries, 3,000 child care teams and 1,095 kindergartens were set up in the province of Heilungkiang, "freeing" 225,300 women to take part in the summer sowing. These were not light tasks, for they involved such work as transplanting of seedlings and manufacturing of fertilizers. But the Communists insisted that women were much happier collecting manure than taking care of their loved children.
Communist Law Theory
Pao Ting-kan was formerly "president of the Higher People's Court of Kirin." In March of this year, when the rectification and leap forward movement was at its height, a meeting of judicial personnel of Kirin exposed him as the head of the "rightist clique" and, according to the Kirin Jih Pao, "thorough1y liquidated his influence."
His successor, Wang Chi-jen, in a report to the "Second Provincial People's Congress of Kirin" in July, made known Pao's case for the first time. The report also served as the best example of the Communist theory of law and how anyone still retaining a sense of justice could never reconcile himself with that theory. Said Wang:
"The rightists headed by Pao Ting-kan opposed the Party and socialism not only during the rectification movement, but at other times too, and making use of their official positions and powers, actively opposed the system of the people's democratic dictatorship. Trying vainly to change the character and functions of the people's courts, they disseminated the view that class struggle has died down', and attacked the people's democratic dictatorship.
"Under the pretext of having to maintain 'independence of judgment', they actively opposed Party leadership of the people's courts. They also freely disseminated such reactionary old legal viewpoints as 'presumption of justice', 'benefit of the doubt for the accused' and 'appeals necessarily lead to reduction of sentences' in an effort to exculpate criminals and let off counter-revolutionaries.
"The rightists concealed in the people's courts of various levels in the province also voiced support for one another and caused trouble. Under the influence of rightist Pao Ting-kan, many people's courts in our province developed the tendency in varying degrees of deviating from the Party's leadership. For a long time many people's courts failed to report their work to, and ask for instructions from, the Party and government leaderships. They did not seriously carry out resolutions taken by the Party and the government, and some even resisted Party and government directives.
"The people's court, being an instrument of dictatorship of the state, should strictly follow the leadership of the Party like any other state organ. It must not only be led in matters of principle and policy by the Party, but also be strictly supervised by the Party, so that in its administration of justice it may correctly carry out policies and enforce law. This is a matter of course. Rightist Pao Ting-kan and others, however, opposed Party leadership on the ground that 'independence of judgment' must be maintained and that they 'obey only the law.'
"Under the direction and influence of Pao Ting-kan and other rightists, the people's courts, instead of basing their actual work on the needs of the struggle and the masses and the needs of production and the central tasks, and instead of using the judicial weapon in defense of the socialist revolution and socialist construction, were detached from politics, the central tasks, and the masses, and regarded the cases they handled as isolated events, and administered justice for the sake of justice.
"Many of the cadres followed rules rigidly and observed the complicated legal procedures and system, thus binding the hands and feet of the revolutionary masses and preventing prompt and effective blows to the enemy. In addition, the judicial ranks also contained some impurities, and a small number of bad elements and serious law breakers concealed in our judicial organs continued to do evil. As a result, the people's courts of various levels in the province were a tone time led into rightist errors of varying degrees of seriousness, such as failure to mete out punishment when it was due, meting out of light sentences for serious crimes, dereliction of duty, and insufficient enforcement of the dictatorship, all of which did great damage to the revolutionary cause and construction of the Party and the nation, and moreover seriously divorced the people's courts from the people."
This is Communist definition of law and justice, exactly opposite to the accepted meaning of the words in every civilized country on this side of the Iron Curtain.