Taiwan Today

Message of President Chiang Kai-shek to the Chinese people

October 26, 1971

My Fellow Countrymen at home and abroad:

The twenty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly has elected to violate the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and adopted a resolution proposed by and other nations which are currying favor with the Chinese Com­munists. As a result, the Mao Tse-tung bandit regime has usurped the Republic of China's rightful position in the United Nations and the Security Council. Before this infamous resolution could be put to a vote, this coun­try announced its withdrawal from the United Nations, an organization which it took part in establishing. We de­clared that neither the Government of the Republic of China nor the Chinese people will ever recognize the validity of an illegal resolution adopted by the current United Nations session in flagrant violation of the provisions of its own Charter.

The Mao Tse-tung bandit regime is a group rebelling against the Republic of China. Internally, it has committed enormous crimes against the people of . It is the common enemy of all the Chinese people and especially of our seven hundred million com­patriots on the mainland. Externally, the Mao regime stops at nothing in promoting subversion and committing aggression, and still stands officially condemned by the United Nations as an aggressor. The Chinese Com­munists may occupy the mainland for the present. But the Government of the Republic of China, with its base in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, is the true representative of the seven hundred million Chinese on the mainland, expressing their common will, heeding their anguished out­-cries and inculcating within them a maximum of courage and hope with which to struggle against the violence of the Mao regime and win back their human rights and freedom. It is clear, therefore, that the Chinese Communists should never be permitted illegally to occupy the General As­sembly and Security Council seats held by the Republic of China, whether this be judged by the principles of the United Nations Charter or on a basis of humanitarianism, the law of nature or, in particular, the common will of all the Chinese people.

In 1944, took part in the Dumbarton Oaks Conference and subsequently signed the United Nations Declaration. This country then took part in the organizational conference of the United Nations in and helped write the Charter. These efforts were dedicated to saving "succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind." To achieve this goal, the purposes and principles of the United Nations were set forth for the faithful adherence of all the participants. But the current session of the United Na­tions General Assembly has decided to destroy these very purposes and principles of the Charter, thereby ignoring and completely disregarding law and justice, shamelessly bowing to the forces of evil and timorously yielding to violence. Thus the United Nations, which this country helped to establish after so many trials, has finally degraded itself and become a den of iniquity. History will surely show that our announcement of with­drawal from the United Nations actually presaged the demise of the United Nations itself.

The Chinese cultural tradition is to uphold justice and love peace. Al­though we have withdrawn from the United Nations, which we helped establish, we shall continue to be guided by the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter in the international community and shall continue to fight courageously for international truth and justice and for world peace and security.

I hereby solemnly declare:

- That the restoration of human rights and freedom to our 700 million compatriots on the mainland is the common will of the whole Chinese race and is our unalterable national purpose and the holy task which we must accomplish.

- That the Republic of China, an independent sovereign state, will tolerate no external interference.

- That regardless of the changing international situation, we shall un­hesitatingly make whatever sacrifices may be required and persevere in our struggle. We shall never waver. We shall never compromise.

For the people of the world, I have this warning: In the brief span of half a century, our world has been visited by two horrendous World Wars. After the First War, a ravaged world sought to prevent a repetition with organization of the , in which were vested man's hopes for world justice and peace. Unfortunately, some nations bowed before the threats of aggressors. These nations mistakenly thought that submission to evil and knuckling under in the face of violence could be traded for a peace of humiliation. As a result, the was paralyzed and then collapsed. It could no longer serve the functions of curbing aggres­sion and upholding justice. The Second World War followed not long afterward. Today, some democratic countries have chosen to enter the camp of those supporting the Chinese Communists and have helped the Mao Tse-tung regime illegally to occupy our rightful place in the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council. Their thinking and their actions are almost identical with the thought and deeds of some countries on the eve of the Second World War. The consequences promise to be extremely grave. The facts of his­tory tell us that our moral courage in the safeguarding of justice consti­tutes the solid cornerstone of world security and peace. Machiavellian machinations of power politics on the other hand, lead inevitably to war.

My Fellow Countrymen: The destiny of our nation is not in the hands of the United Nations. It is squarely in our own hands. As Dr. Sun Yat-sen, our National Father, puts it, "The fundamentals of existence invariably are found in the proud and independent spirit of a nation and its people. This means that if a nation is not tempted by bribes and does not surrender to physical force, it will earn its place in the world."

Today, here on this revolutionary base, we command a sizable population and considerable resources, as expressed in our military strength and economic prowess. They are sup­ported by our spiritual force. We also command the hearts of our 700 million compatriots on the mainland as well as the patriotism of our 18 million anti-Communist compatriots living overseas. The Republic of China is not a weakling of or the world which can arbitrarily be sold out by anyone. We will continue to wield a strong influence in the changing balance of international power and in the determination of human destiny. Everyone should be aware not only that the actions of others may affect us, but also should understand that our actions may bring about far-reaching world change.

The international situation now confronting us is marked by danger and pitfalls. Nevertheless, as long as we ourselves are strong, no force in all the world can shake us. As long as we ourselves are courageous and of undaunted spirit, no force in all the world can humiliate us. As long as we ourselves persevere in the struggle, the final success will be ours. As all of you know so well, the fruits of revolutionary victory are always borne of great adversity.

All of us must recognize that the changes in today's world revolve around the problem and that the manner in which the problem is to be solved will decide the fate of the human race. We therefore find ourselves occupying the most significant key position in this situation of great change. Our success or failure, advance or setback, in the current struggle will decide whether the world is to have security or danger and whether mankind is to know happi­ness or misfortune. We should not sit calmly and wait for changes in the world situation. We must take the initiative in order to control the changing situation, fight positively and keep ourselves always one step ahead of the enemy.

In the last 20 years not a day has passed without further struggle for power among the Chinese Com­munists. The tempo of struggle has recently increased. This suffices to prove that Mao Tse-tung thought and the Communist system are completely bankrupt. The people of the main­land, including the majority of Com­munist cadres, at first despaired but now have started to resist. The Chinese Communists have been aware of the erupting anti-Communist volcano under their feet and of their inability to control it. They have been compelled to change their external strategy. They are seeking a respite through trickery and deceit. But the Chinese Communists can never change their announced goals of "anti-Soviet revisionism," "anti-American imperial­ ism" and "anti all reactionaries." Actually, this change in external strategy has brought their lines of thought and policy to an impasse and has given rise to ever more serious confusion, chaos and worsening power struggle. has thus been provided for the forces of anti­-Communism and the anti-oppression struggle to accelerate and expand their mainland activities. Faced with this situation, we should further reinforce our faith, consolidate our strength and intensify our military preparedness so that we shall lose no time in grasping the moment of opportunity. We must accelerate the mainland prairie fires of anti-Mao and anti-Communist revolutionary struggle.

Fellow Countrymen: The course of our anti-Communist struggle is like that of a boat sailing rough seas in unpredictable weather. However, when all of us have common understanding of our basic situation of anti-Communism and are no longer confused by momentary change; when all of us are moving in the right direc­tion - sincerely, with unity, with a single purpose and sharing fortune and misfortune; when all of us decline to relax or become complacent or let down our guard in fair weather, and are not fearful or disappointed and do not cheat ourselves when the storm comes; when all of us augment our strength and spirit as the going worsens; then shall we cross over to the other shore, liberate our com­patriots and recover our lost mainland.

(Continued from page 31)

They consider themselves to have been vindicated by history and their success; thus those who would deal with them can hardly expect that they have "softened" or have changed their goals or perspectives.

I have included in this summary history of the Human Costs of Communism in some individual accounts which help to bring this human element for the Chinese into better focus. Whether it is the experience of an escaped slave laborer, the eye-witness to the terror of the campaign against counterrevolution­aries in 1951, or the pitiful letter of a Chinese caught up in the madness of the "Great' Leap Forward" of 1958, each of these accounts helps to remind us of that critical factor: the individual human. When one begins to multiply such individual sorrows and agonies by the millions, then perhaps it is possible to understand when a Chinese refugee says that the is at flood tide, swollen with the tears of the Chinese people.

The Fifty Years

On the eve of the final Communist victory in in 1949, Mao Tse-tung paused on the twenty-eighth anniversary of the founding of the CCP to survey the past and plot the future. The first twenty-eight years had seen the Party single-mindedly, through reverses and successes, pursue its one over-riding goal - the capture of state power. In his commemorative work On the People's Democratic Dictatorship, Mao promised to continue in the path which had brought success. He warned that the "people's army, people's police, and people's courts" would be used to defend the dictatorship which was being established and to aid with the completion of the revolution. In this work Mao defined "the people" who were to be exercising the dictatorship as consisting of four classes: the peasants, the proletariat, the national bourgeoisie, and the petty bourgeoisie - all under the leadership of the "working class and the Communist Party." All others were, in an Orwellian sense, "un-people." And he warned that the latter, whom he termed "reactionaries," were to have no rights and that if "they speak or act in an unruly way they will be promptly stopped and punished. "¹

The Chinese bourgeoisie, including the minor and front parties, who joined in support of the People's Re­public of , nursed hope for a mellowing of the Communists' attitude. Mao had, after all, promised that this first stage in his two-stage revolution "will be a considerably long one." Private businessmen knew that they would eventually be doomed in under the Communists, but many anticipated a period of thirty to fifty years before Mao's brand of socialism would spell their doom.² Many would have been wise to do as Mao did and survey the first twenty-eight years of the CCP, for the experiences of those years were to set the tone and the pattern of Chinese Communist revolutionary rule. They would have learned there was little hope for a liberal treatment from their new rulers.

In one of his earliest published works in March 1927, Mao had warned: "a revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous."³ He continued that for the revolu­tion to succeed, "To put it bluntly, it is necessary to create terror for a while in every rural area ..."⁴ The leader of the Communist Party of China was a good Stalinist who believed in the efficacy of terror for the sake of the ultimate goal.⁵

Other aspects of the period of the drive to power which were to set the tone for the PRC included the subordination to Marxist-Leninist dogma - an attempt to fit the Chinese people and civilization within the framework of an artificial intellectual construct devel­oped in Europe. Mao himself, in a statement which indicated his contempt for his native culture, asserted that the Chinese people were "poor and blank." Thus, they could be molded into a pattern which he perceived. Part of that pattern included those aspects which have come to characterize his rule: mass mobilization for various projects and undertakings; a preponderance of military style including the viewing of practically every state policy or action in military terms, with, for ex­ample, "shock troops" for the literacy campaigns, "brigades" as a basic organization in the people's com­munes, or Red Guard "armies" storming the citadels of power of China's "Khrushchev"; the dualism of the love-hate, friend-enemy, who-whom, relationships of the Marxist-Leninist class struggle interpretation of the world in which there can be no neutrals.⁶

The Chinese Communist path to power included an initial "united front" with the Nationalists (1924-27) during which a military and political campaign was launched to wrest the country from the hands of the warlords; the breakdown of the front and resultant civil war (1927-36) which included the Nationalist military campaigns against Mao's headquarters in Southeast China; and finally the "Long March" of 1934-35 to Communist headquarters in the Northwest where, from 1936 throughout World War II, Mao directed his separate forces which were once again nominally in a second "united front" with the Nation­alists (1936-45). Then came the second civil war of the Chinese Communist drive for power (1945-49). Through the course of this quarter century of unremitting struggle the costs to the Chinese people were staggering. It is well nigh impossible to make an ac­curate assessment. But assessments are possible within certain limits.

Some writers have estimated the number of casualties occasioned by the Communists in their drive to power. One common figure given is twenty million.⁷ For more than two decades, the Nationalist gov­ernment under Chiang Kai-shek fought back against the Communist insurgents. Sometimes it fought defensive­ly, sometimes it took the offensive. Certainly the five "annihilation campaigns" which Chiang Kai-shek waged against the Chinese Communists in Kiangsi before they broke out of encirclement and embarked on their Long March (1934-35) were costly to both sides and also to the surrounding innocent peasants caught in the crossfire. The March itself was costly to Communist forces as well as to the local forces of the countryside through which they moved. The second civil war ( 1945-49) involved the use of modern military equip­ment which had been developed during the Second World War, and was doubtless much more costly. It was also a period when the Communists were generally on the offensive.

The Early Years

In 1949 the Chinese people were indeed deserving of peace and of opportunity to unify and reconstruct their ravaged country. The more than two decades of Communist power, however, have brought no surcease to struggle, violence, warfare, or misery for China. There have been external wars such as in Korea (1950­-53), with India (1962), and along the Soviet borders ( 1969); there have been formidable conflicts with areas where minority nationalities are situated, particularly in Tibet where hostilities assumed major proportions in 1959 and have been continuing sporadically since; there have been the struggles waged in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, such as that in Kwangsi in the summer of 1968 where an estimated 50,000 were kill­ed in the city of Wuchow alone.⁸

But perhaps even more tragic has been the pattern of rule which Mao and his fellow Communists have used to bring about political control of the Chinese people and the development of power for the Chinese state. Since 1949 has been subjected to a pattern of wave after wave of mass campaigns breaking upon the countryside and only gradually receding. These campaigns, sometimes overlapping, have followed each other in such a way as to allow few moments of calm. Mao has indeed been a proponent of permanent revolu­tion. Each of these campaigns has claimed millions of victims; all have been infused with the Maoist belief in the desirability of struggle and the necessity for violence; some have resulted in large-scale purges or the elimination of whole groupings within the society.

The naming of some of these campaigns is enough to evoke apprehension among refugees in , where a minimum of two million Chinese have moved to escape from Chinese Communist rule.

There was the Agrarian Reform of 1949-52 which brought about the execution of several million land­lords.⁹

Then came the campaign against counterrevolutionaries of 1951-52 during the first twelve months of which it was estimated that one and one-half million were executed.¹⁰

The 3-anti and 5-anti campaigns of 1951-53 purged the business, finance and industrial circles with executions and a wave of suicides. All of these were linked to bandit suppression campaigns from 1949 to 1956.

In connection with the purge of Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih in 1955, Mao launched yet another campaign against "hidden counterrevolutionaries" in 1955. Following this, he moved on yet another front with a drive for collectivization of the peasants in "agricultural producers' cooperatives" which he demanded be com­pleted by the end of the First Stalin-type Five-Year Plan (1953-57). It was at the end of this period that he finally persuaded the intellectuals and others who had joined in the united front of 1949 to speak up and voice criticisms in the spring of 1957. Their vehemence against the Communist Party and Mao's leadership re­sulted in an anti-rightist campaign which terrorized during the ninth and tenth years of Communist rule, and fused into the "Great Leap" of 1958-1959.

This first decade of Communist rule in China may be forgotten in the West - after all, we have short memories, a fact on which Communist leaders have frequently traded - but the Chinese people have not forgotten their leaders' capacity to carry through the combination purge-drive which can infuse the popula­tion with that terror which Mao had early on decided was a prerequisite for effective rule. Perhaps the following three excerpts - three of thousands available but possibly forgotten - can help explain why this is the case.

Mass Executions of the Early Period

Millions were executed in the immediate post­-power seizure period in Communist China. Many of the executions took place after mass public trials, in which the assembled crowds, whipped up to a frenzy by planted agitators, called invariably for the death penalty and for no mercy for the accused. During this early period, Mao and his colleagues made no effort to conceal the violent course being followed. On the contrary, the most gruesome and detailed accounts were printed in the Communist press and broadcast over the official radio for the purpose of amplifying the condi­tion of mass terror the trials were clearly intended to induce.

The first example below is of public trials which took place in Peking (as, indeed, in all major cities in mainland ) during the spring of 1951. It is taken from the China Missionary Bulletin, a monthly, of May, 1951, and quotes extensively from the official Chinese Communist sources:

Mass Murders in

The bloody terrorism erupted in on March 24 and 25, and was imitated immediately by other large cities. A terrifying mass display was staged on the 24th of March under the slumbering trees of the Cen­tral Park in . According to the Communist re­ port, more than 5,000 people were present, representa­tives of political parties, of factories, commercial firms, religions, schools, etc. The band of "anti-revolutionaries", those to be executed, were led to the meeting to be charged publicly. Thus the typical K'ung su hui, so widespread in the countryside, appeared in a slightly different guise in the large cities.

Here, instead of accusations arising from the masses, they were made by the Mayor of and the various department heads of the city government. With each speech the bitter hatred was blown more white hot. In all, the meeting lasted almost five hours. At the end the Mayor of , P'ang Cheu, again stood before the emotionally worked up audience and in a dramatic speech asked them to pass sentence:

"Comrades, what should we do with all these criminals, bandits, secret agents, evil landlords, heads of reactionary Taoist sect organizers?"

The crowd unanimously roared: "Shoot them".

The Mayor continued: "Should we have mercy on them?"

"No Mercy", - the crowd shouted back.

The Mayor commented: "Truly, no mercy for them. If we would pardon them, that would be a sin on the part of the Government."

The next question was: "Is it cruelty to execute all these criminals?"

The answer came back: "It is not cruelty."

The Mayor commented: "Truly it is not cruelty.

It is mercy. We are protecting the lives of the people whom they harm."

The last question was put: "Comrades, are they right or are we right?"

And the last answer: "We are right", started the cheering for the Mayor and Mao Tse-tung.

The Mayor concluded: "We are here representing the people. It is our duty to do the will of the people. We suppress the anti-revolutionaries. This act we perform according to the law. Those who have to be killed, we kill. In cases where we could kill or not, we do not kill. But when it has to be killing, we kill. ... Now you all want them to be suppressed. Tomorrow the Court will pronounce the judgment and they will be executed". (Jen Min Daily, March 25, 1951).

The next day a big meeting was held outside the city walls (although it is not clear who were present) and the executions took place and were broadcast over the radio. (Jen Min Daily, April 3).

The second example comes from an official Chinese Communist book distributed in English to the outside world in 1951. It is 's version of one of the trials of the "landlords" whom Mao had decreed should be eliminated as a class. The executions of many innocents in the countryside were also accomplished through mass meetings and demonstrations.

With raised fists, the audience below shouted in one voice, "Down with reactionary landlords!" "We demand that Peng Ehr-hu be shot!" ...

The masses again shouted in unison. "Down with criminal landlords who hide and disperse their proper­ties!" "Long live the unity of the peasants!"

It had started raining. But the tense atmosphere did not in any way lessen. …

By four o'clock over 20 peasants had poured out their grievances from the platform. Mass sentiment had surged to the boiling point. Over and above there was a curious hush of expectancy. Not one person left or took shelter in spite of the terrific downpour.

(Then the people's tribunal met to deliberate.)

"Peasant comrades!" The judge's voice was grave. "We have just heard some of the accusations made by local peasants. From these accusations, it ought to be clear to everyone how the landlord class has always worked hand in glove with the enemy of the peasants - whether it was Japanese imperialism or the KMT (Kuomintang) - to oppress the peasants themselves. The same motive has prompted them to act as fawning lackeys to American imperialism, since American imperialism is directly opposite to the people's interests too.

"Our verdicts on the three criminal landlords are as follows: ... Pen Yin-ting, age 49, native of , has caused the deaths of patriotic youths during the Resistance War. After liberation he or­ganized superstitious societies and spread rumours to delude the public. Also he has hidden firearms with the intent to plan for an uprising. The sentence for him is - death. Do you all agree?"

The second of applause that came from below the platform was deafening. ...

With one arm sheltering his tear-stained face, Pen Yin-ting was hurried along. ... When Grandma Li, with her bony fist clenched, edged her way through the crowds and tried to hit him on the shoulder, the guards immediately stopped her. A cordon was quickly formed by them around the prisoners as more blows were about to shower from all directions. ...

The prisoners were escorted to the graveyard south of the temple. From the back of the graveyard came the sound or several shots.

The sound shrilly pierced through the thick, moist atmosphere enveloping Huiling hsiang. Sighs of relief were heaved as justice was meted out to the convicted.

"Down with the reactionary landlords!"

"Long live the emancipation of the peasants!"

"Long live the Communist Party!"

"Long live Chairman Mao Tse-tung!"

The masses, for the first time freed from their dread and restraints, let out these slogans with a voice stronger than ever.¹¹

The third account of the mass executions which have characterized communist rule is of particular significance because it was written by one of the leaders who initially participated in Mao's' coalition govern­ment and after several years escaped to .

The gates of the Bureau of Public Security open­ed, and out came a police truck with about twenty policemen standing on it, guns in hand, followed by twenty-odd trucks carrying prisoners' and four police guards each. The trucks went slowly past our hostel, and I saw that every prisoner had been stripped to his pants and had his wrists tied behind his back. They were crouching on the trucks, still and lifeless, and at first glance, gave one the impression of so many pigs going to slaughter. The loudspeakers began to boom, "Shoot the counterrevolutionaries" and the crowd shouted and clapped. All around me, people were calmly chatting and laughing. After the trucks went by, the huge crowd closed in after them and followed them to the execution ground.

That day, more than four hundred so-called counterrevolutionaries were shot. I did not go to the execu­tion ground, but I was told that the place was packed, and that after each execution, the crowd, under direction applauded.

That night, I borrowed a copy of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities from another member of the wlw happened to be a writer. As I read, I could understand why it was possible for the French to derive pleasure from killing. They hated the French aristoc­racy. But what I had seen that day was different. The masses had no quarrel with those who were executed, yet they shouted and applauded the Government­ sponsored massacre. I think in their hearts they must have been frightened. ¹²

The Campaigns of the Second Decade

The second decade of Chinese Communist rule began in the midst of the most grandiose of all Mao Tse-tung's campaigns, the "Great Leap Forward" of 1958-60. This mobilized tens of millions of the Chinese to smelt iron in primitive and ineffective backyard furnaces (a testament of the Chairman's ignorance of the modern scientific world) and sought to push the Chinese peasants into communal-type militarized living, replete with, in some cases, separation of sexes and families, communal dining halls, and abandonment of all personal and family items. The human cost of this grandiose Maoist scheme in terms of wasted energy and resources, suffering, and death can probably never be reckoned. Not surprisingly, even this found apologists in the West, including Edgar Snow, who claimed that the movement was spontaneous and volun­tary on the part of the Chinese peasantry and people and that it was a success in terms of teaching modernization as well as productivity.

The "Great Leap Forward" met with stern Soviet disapproval, and, as the Sino-Soviet dispute subsequent­ly developed, the Kremlin was to level many charges against the Maoists concerning their brutality. Some of these charges seemed to approach in dimensions the figures on casualties and oppression which have been leveled against the PRC by the rival government in .¹³

In 1969, for example, charged:

In the course of 10 years, more than 25 million people in were exterminated. More than 25 million people! And to be more precise: 2.8 million from 1949 to 1952; 3.6 million from 1953 to 1957; 6.7 million from 1958 to 1960; and 13.3 million Chi­nese were savagely assassinated from 1961 to 1965.¹⁴

The Soviets have not been noted for the reliability of their figures in such propaganda barrages, and it is interesting to note that they lay the greatest number of casualties at Mao's door in the period following the serious outbreak of the dispute. According to , during 1960 alone, Mao Tse-tung's government exter­minated more Chinese than were killed during the entire war against .

We can wonder, too, given the nature of the Soviet system, how sincere are their denunciations of forced labor in . According to the Soviets, for instance, the authorities had to resort to serious measures in 1959 to deal with popular resistance occasioned by the "Great Leap." In the words of Radio Moscow -

Mass repressions were designed, it seems, to reeducate by forced labor. The discontented were dump­ed by the millions in enormous concentration camps. These camps were situated in the most deserted and remote areas of , and the prisoners were subject­ed to physical labor which was almost always beyond their strength. Of course, it has been impossible thus for to obtain any precise details of those who were tortured to death in the famous reeducation camps.¹⁵

The aftermath of the failure of the Great Leap led to numerous campaigns from 1960 to 1964 during which the Party sought to restore order and discipline by making "everyone a soldier." Numerous soldier heroes, willing to brave hardships to "serve the people," were extolled for the benefit of young people from the towns and cities who were dispatched to the coun­tryside or out to the frontier areas. This latter pro­gram, which was once again in full swing beginning in 1968, has seen millions of youths sent from their homes to areas which can barely sustain the present population.

In 1965-66 Mao launched yet another great campaign, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which lasted until 1969. This, too, brought in its wake executions, purges, and terror.

This brief recounting of the Maoist "rule by drives" is enough to make one marvel at the resilience of the Chinese people. Already in 1959 there were estimates that the first decade of the People's Republic of had brought the extermination of thirty million people.¹⁶ The additional cost in casualties and suffering since the Great Leap Forward and the Cul­tural Revolution have yet to be measured.

Some Reservations

Such figures as those cited above, even though some of them are based upon official statements by leaders in , can only be rough guesses at best. In his report to the National People's Congress on June 26, 1957, for example, Chou En-lai stated that since 1949, of the counterrevolutionaries captured, only 16 percent had been executed, 42 percent were sent to labor camps, and 32 percent had been placed under surveillance.¹⁷ Official estimates of the number of counterrevolutionaries "deactivated" before that time ranged in millions, but, except for a brief period in 1951, has refrained from giving figures. Four of the six regional leaders of the Great Admin­istrative Areas into which the PRC was initially divided stated that, in the early period of the campaign against "native bandits" and counterrevolutionaries in the areas, 1,176,000 had been liquidated.¹⁸ But one can wonder even at these figures.

As the foregoing indicates, the past half century has been one of almost continuous warfare, and the costs of war are hard to measure - squandered energies and resources can never be fully accounted for; postponement of necessary social and economic measures can cause undue burdens for future generations. Heartache and separation come at a high price. In the case of casualty figures in , they are generally imprecise, and contending sides have not avoided the usual practice of inflating them when it suits a pur­pose at hand.

tends to be so vast a subject and the num­bers of people involved so overwhelming that we all too frequently forget the human equation. When figures are in the millions, there can be a tendency to forget that the subject is humanity rather than the latest figure on steel production. The millions of Jews ex­terminated by the Nazis were thinking, loving, emoting, creative beings. The millions who died at the hands of Stalin partook of the same characteristics­ - they, too, were human. So also have been the victims of Mao's and his comrades' attempt to mould Chinese civilization into the framework of his dogma.

An attempt to assess the cost in casualties of the Communist movement in is obviously fraught with uncertainty. With regard to there is just so much that we do not know and can never know. Not only is there an inconsistency in Communist figures,¹⁹ but estimates from the outside world vary greatly. Then, too, there are a number of other imponderables: How many Allied troops died in World War II, for example, because Chinese Nationalists and Communists had committed troops against each other or because Mao's policy was to use only ten percent of his forces and energy against the Japanese?²⁰ Or, how many of the 34,000 war dead in are a direct or indirect cost of communism in ?

The following table offers in extremely rough form possible parameters of the estimates of the direct cost in human lives occasioned by the movement which Mao and eleven others started in 1921 to "liberate" the Chinese people. It is entirely possible that a reasonable estimate would be that the figure approaches fifty million Chinese-also members of the human race.

The question which must concern us also is not whether this or that figure is exaggerated, but the ex­tent to which mass unstructured killings have been and continue to be a part of the mode of rule in Commu­nist China. The table should at the very least give some pause to those who would wrap this kind of in­justice in the dirty linen of expediency, of necessity, to use Howard Fast's language.

What sort of rule is this which occasions the exe­cution of untold numbers of young people, such as those whose bodies floated into in 1968 and again in 1970? Where is the consistency of apologists who maintain that the rule of Mao has brought new spirit to , and then argue about the disfigured, tortured and bound bodies floating into , that the Chinese have always been that way?

It is worth remembering that at the very moment in June 1971, when reporters were commenting on Mao Tse-tung's creation of the new Chinese man (see, for example, Seymour Topping's dispatches in the New York Times), troops of the People's Liberation Army were machine-gunning scores of their fellow Chinese who were attempting to escape to Hong Kong from Mao's new paradise. Many of the youths drowned in the attempt, and others - the few - who made it told stories which were reported in the press, but were omitted in the euphoria that surrounded the first American direct access to Communist China for journalists and a few specialists in more than two decades. The number of casualties occasioned by at­tempts to flee , though not included in the pre­ceding table, cannot be considered insignificant.

Forced Labor

Surely one of the high human costs which the Chinese people have paid for rule by the Communist Party has been the system of "Reform Through Labor Service," a euphemism for forced labor or slave labor. This has been a part of the Chinese Communist political system from the outset, though the formal 77 regulations-worked out with the aid of Soviet "experts" sent by Stalin-were not drawn up until June 27, 1952, and not officially promulgated until August 26, 1954.

During the early years talked quite openly about this system, which it was confident would help to remould the class character of those former enemies whom it hoped to "save." It is an interesting commentary on Western wishful thinking about Mao's that although forced labor is an organic and essential element of the Communist economy, it has received practically no attention for more than a decade.²¹ One can search the pages of the China Quarterly (the most important scholarly journal devoted to Communist China, now in its eleventh year of publication) in vain for a treatment of forced labor.

Part of the difficulty may lie in the curtailment of overt references to the system following the pres­entation to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations in December 1955 of a report on forced labor which had a major section devoted to revelations about the conditions in . Nevertheless, at the time of the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the PRC in 1959, there was an exhibition in Peking of the achievements of the corrective labor camps, and a subsequent one in in April 1960.²² Further, there have been many refugees who have found their way out of mainland , who have testified to the continued importance of forced labor in the Chinese Communist economy. At the time of the Cultural Revolution outsiders were re­minded once again of the importance of the labor reform camps. In the contending between factions in in 1967, for example, one Red Guard publica­tion reported on the disorders that was "faced with a huge decisive battle," and noted that even "Labor reform camp prisoners are being set free."²³

There has been little attempt, since the early days of the Chinese Communist rule to carry through systematic study of forced labor and the conditions in forced labor camps. Following the airing of some of the details before United Nations bodies with much of the evidence gathered from Communist publications, played down its own discussions of "reform through labor service."

It is ironic that some of the more recent discussions of forced labor in Communist China have come from the . For example, Radio Moscow, on May 30, 1967, claimed that more than 18 million political prisoners were languishing in some 10,000 camps in mainland , and it quoted a re­cently escaped Chinese as saying that in the labor camps the people were being treated like animals. Surely there is need for a more thorough scrutiny of this part of Mao's China, which is related to construction schemes and to the whole social and economic system, and we need more reliable information than the Soviets are likely to furnish if we are to under­stand the extent to which forced labor colors the whole of Communist China.

On the score of forced labor, as with casualties, figures are imprecise. The United Nations' report of 1955 listed some 20 to 25 million in regular labor camps and another 12.5 million in corrective labor camps. One scholar in the West estimated the number at about 14 million in 1954.²⁴ Certainly, as the year have passed, this institution, with its high human costs, has tended to be surrounded by ever denser fog. Most authors must, in the absence of adequate piecing to­gether of hard evidence (and few seem inclined to that task), resort to imprecise phrases, but even the most cautious have commented on the "staggering number of persons involved. "²⁵

(To be concluded in next issue)