Taiwan Today

They Become New Serfs In Communes

Mao Tse-tung used the Chinese peasant to gain power. Ironically, it was again Mao who plunged the peasant into a decade of untold miseries unparalleled in Chinese history.

The Peiping regime calls itself "the people's government." Yet the peasantry, which constitutes more than 80 per cent of the Chinese people, has been made the main target for ruthless Red exploitation — both in the grain they produce and their labor.

Communist exploitation and oppression of the Chinese peasantry may be divided into three stages:

(1) The so-called "bourgeois democratic revolution," wherein Mao Tse-tung, using land reform as a bait, capitalized on the vast manpower and material resources of the peasantry to seize power.

(2) The "socialist transformation," wherein Mao forced the mainland 500,000,000 peasants to join collective farms or agricultural cooperatives.

(3) The "transition to total Communism" wherein Mao introduced the "people's commune" to turn all mainland peasants into virtual slave laborers and serfs.

"Land reform" is one of the main weapons employed by international communism to subvert governments of under-developed nations. The decision to adopt "land reform" as a means of mustering the support of the Chinese peasant masses in the Reds' bid for power was reached at a meeting of the Third International in November 1926. The Chinese Communists, acting on the direction of the Third International, first carried out "land revolution" in the Soviet area in Kiangsi in the late twenties, resulting in a wave of arrests, confiscation and bloodshed.

After the outbreak of the war with Japan, the Reds pledged allegiance to the National Government and an end to their policy of confiscating privately owned land by force. "Land reform" was then substituted for "land revolution." As government troops fought bitterly against the better equipped Japanese, the Communists lost no time expanding their fighting force with new recruits from the peasantry. The expanded Red army composed mostly of peasants was hurled against the Government in an armed rebellion after the war.

Land Reform Campaign

The first major task undertaken by the Communists following the convocation of the so-called "People's Political Consultative Conference" and the establishment of the puppet regime in 1949 was the universal enforcement of the land reform. The process was divided into three stages: (1) Liquidation of landlords and "ruffians;" (2) classification of farmers and distribution of land; and (3) land reform recheck.

No sooner had the land reform movement been started than a reign of terror set in. Landlords as well as rich farmers were denounced, humiliated, beaten, or slain at public trials and "struggle" meetings by Red-led village mobs. It was the intention of the Communists to totally eliminate the land-owning class which constituted about ten per cent of the estimated rural population of 500,000,000. In places where' there were no landlords, from 5 to 10 per cent of the population were chosen from among the farmers as targets for "struggle."

In 1950, so called "people's courts" were set up to try the ruffians, anti-Communists, and saboteurs of land reform. These were some of the labels imposed on landlords and rich, sometimes even middle, farmers. Chou En-lai, in a report to the "National People's Congress," revealed that of those tried by the people's courts during the land reform, 18.8 per cent were sentenced to death and 42.6 per cent to "labor reform." On the basis of Chou's statement, it is estimated that more than 5,000,000 landlords and their families were butchered and about another 20,000,000 condemned to hard labor in concentration camps as a result of the land reform.

What did the average farmer get out of this costly land reform? According to Liao Lu-yen, Peiping's "minister of agriculture," a total of 700,000,000 mou of land were distributed to 300,000,000 peasants on the mainland. Middle farmers who made up 20 per cent of the rural population before the land reform had increased to about 80 per cent; the percentage of poor farmers had dropped from 70 per cent to 10-20 per cent, and was still steadily falling. In actuality, the average acreage of land allotted to tenant and poor farmers during the land reform varied from province to province. According to Communist statistics, the average farmer in Kwang tung re­ ceived from 0.7 to 1 mou of land; in Chekiang and Hupeh from 1 to 3.5 mou; in Honan from 2 to 3 mou; in Hunan 1 to 2.5 mou; in Shensi, Kansu and Ninghsia 3 mou; and in the Northwest from 1.5 to 2 mou. The plot of land apportioned to each farmer was too small to yield sufficient crops to meet his needs. What is more, out of the limited fruits of his labor, he had to pay "agricultural tax" at a rate ranging from 30 to 50 per cent. In some cases the tax rate was as high as 80%. The "liberated" peasants were in fact no better off than the pre-land reform days.

The only beneficiaries of the land reform were the Communists themselves. Statistics are unavailable as to the total value of food-stuffs, farming tools, draft animals, buildings, and valuables seized from landlords. A conservative estimate pegs it at US$10,000,000,000. It was plain that the land reform was not intended to improve the lot of the peasantry.

Next: Collectivizaton

In the land reform drive, the Red propagandists stressed the land-to-the-tiller aspect of the program. In fact, it was the lure of getting a share of the soil that made the peasants blindly follow the biddings of the Communists. The peasants did not own their land long. In the collectivization and communization that followed, they were stripped not only of their land holdings but of their farming implements and livestock as well.

The concepts of collectivization were contrary to the basic thinking and interests of Chinese farmers. Soon after the introduction, widespread peasant resistance was reported. Mao Tse-tung, in his report to the "Supreme State Conference," in February 1957, admitted the existence of "contradictions within the ranks of the people." Teng Tze-hui listed six "contradictions:" those between the "state" and collective farms (cooperatives,) between cooperatives and their members, between cooperatives and "production teams," among members, among production teams and between cadres and the masses. Liao Lu-yen revealed in February last year that there had been many "small"- peasant uprisings and mass withdrawal from collective farms.

In the spring of 1958, Mao Tse-tung ordered a "big leap forward" to boost sagging production. The burden, of course, fell chiefly on the shoulders of the peasant masses. The movement was pushed on such a massive scale that it staggers the human imagination. Hundreds of millions of people, mostly peasants, were forced to work in factories, mines, paddy fields and on irrigation projects. For the production of pig iron alone, 60 million people were mobilized. Another hundred million, carrying hoes, shovels, and baskets were driven to irrigation sites to toil on an around the clock basis.

The mobilization of such a great number of people inevitably created confusion. New problems arose, among them those of billeting and feeding the laboring masses who often worked far away from their home villages. Hence the birth of the "people's communes."

Last Stages: The Commune

The people's commune represents the ultimate stage of communization. It is more collectivized than the collective farms and operate on a much larger scale. Each commune embraces upwards of 20,000 members all of whom live and Work collectively. Private ownership is totally abolished and so is the traditional Chinese family system. The only thing that has remained unchanged from the changeover from collective farms to the people's communes is the long hours the people are required to work-from 14 to 17 hours a day.

The people's commune is nothing new. It had been tried, found "impracticable" and discarded by Soviet Russia. Mao Tse-tung's adoption of the commune system in total disregard for Russia's historical experience, brought only mounting popular opposition, grave economic and political chaos which threatened the very foundation of the ten-year-old puppet regime. In many localities, the Communists were forced to take remedial measures of de communalization. Many commune nurseries and homes for the aged were closed down, members were given the option of eating at the public mess hall or at home, and private ownership of livestock was restored.

Against such failures, the Chinese Communists made some searching debates in the plenary sessions of the CCP Central Committee, and decided to retain the system at least in name. As the Chinese proverb says: "Once on the tiger's back, it is too dangerous to dismount." They could hardly afford to openly admit the failure of so gigantic a project. The repercussions of an open admission would be too violent for the shaky Peiping regime to stand.

So the Chinese peasants are still sweating in their new status of serfs to the commune. They are paying for the blunders of Mao Tse-tung. But some day their patience will come to an end, and it will again be the peasants who bury the Communists together with the communes.

THE FAMILY SYSTEM

Prime Target of Communist Attack

Of all the atrocities perpetrated by Mao Tse-tung & Company against the Chinese people in the past ten years, the most damaging has been the destruction of China's traditional family system.

Through the centuries, the family has remained the basic unit of Chinese society and survived changes of dynasty. It is the strong family ties welded by mutual love and respect for the elder that have bound the nation together and thwarted attempts by alien rulers to assimilate them. The family is an incarnation of Confucian teaching and the foundation of Chinese civilization. Destruction of the family system therefore means destruction of China's 4,000-year-old civilization.

The traditional family concepts are diametrically opposed to communism. The family is founded on private ownership whereas in communism, private ownership is not tolerated. In the family, harmony reigns whereas the Reds' class struggle stresses hate among family members. Family ethics demand strict chastity whereas the Communists advocate "free love," which they insist is as trivial a matter as "drinking a cup of water."

'Stumbling Block'

The Reds consider the family system the "biggest stumbling block to the progress of the Revolution. It must go."

The first Communist attempt to eliminate the family system was the promulgation in 1950 of the so-called New Marriage Law. This law, patterned after similar legislation in Soviet Russia, encourages divorce under the pretext of "liberating women from the feudal bondages of the family system." One does not have to have a reason to sue for divorce. Communist newspapers openly condemned some "people's judges" for following the "old practice" of asking grounds for divorce or of trying to mediate in divorce suits. As a result, the total number of divorce cases handled by "people's courts" in 1950 soared to 186,167. The figure kept climbing until it passed the million mark in 1956.

What fruit did the Communists expect to reap by breaking up the family? Both Engels and Lenin had pointed out that to achieve total emancipation of woman, they must be relieved of household chores and participate in large-scale production work. Mao Tse-tung had made it even more plain. "China's women," he said, "are a great source of manpower. It must be exploited." To ensure maximum exploitation of women labor on the mainland, the Reds advocated late marriage, birth control and abortion.

In coordination with the New Marriage Law, the Communists took further steps to disintegrate the family. This was the initiation of the class struggle. Family members were forced to spy on the struggle against one another. Harmony and love soon gave place to suspicion and fear. During the "three-anti" movement, Communist newspapers carried numerous reports of children denouncing their own parents and of wives their husbands - all in the name of the "patriotic duty" of ferreting out anti-Communists and "reactionaries." Betrayal of one's parents is the worst crime in Chinese ethics.

Women 'Liberated'

Wholesale enslavement of Chinese women came with the launching of the "big leap forward" and introduction of the "people's communes." In March this year, Communist statistics revealed that more than 120,000,000 women in rural areas had joined in "social labor." The New China News Agency reported last January that some 73,000,000 women in 24 provinces were taking part in irrigation projects, and in 21 provinces and municipalities, a total of 67,350,000 women had been thrown into reforestation work.

The birth of the "people's communes" completed the disintegration of the family. Husband and wife left their home and each other to engage in "productive labor" assigned them by the Reds, the aged were shunted to "happy homes" and the young to nurseries and kindergartens.

Commune nurseries and kindergartens are generally ill-equipped and ill-staffed. The Nan Fang Daily News in Kwangtung last winter exposed the appalling conditions in the 16,000 nurseries and kindergartens on Hainan Island. In December, it said, more than half of the children lacked cotton quilts. Many were thinly clad and fed on leftovers. The 200,000-old youngsters howled day and night in the chilly weather. Red papers in Canton, Tsingtao and Chekiang also widely reported the maltreatment of children by nursery and kindergarten workers, who have no training or experience. They were frequently beaten, made to kneel down or deprived of meals as punishments. In some places, children got hurt due to negligence on the part of the so-called nurses. Sick children were often denied medical treatment and healthy ones precautions. As a result, in every nursery or kindergarten, over one half of the children were in ill-health.

'Happy Homes' Unhappy

The aged fare no better. Having depleted their "marginal utility," they top the list of targets to be eliminated. Their life in the "happy homes" is far from happy. Despite their age, they have to labor in order to pay for their food. Inmates of "happy homes" in Canton are required to pay $5.50 a month for their mess. In Fangyu and Nanhai counties, monthly food costs $8 and $9 respectively. In case the work remuneration does not cover the mess, the balance has to be borne by one's relatives. If they are unable to pay, the unpaid balance is allowed to accumulate within certain limits beyond which the "delinquent" inmate is liable to be expelled from the home and left to his own fate. Yet the most pitiable ones are those who are too sick or too old to work. They are invariably sent to designated hospitals and forced to take what is called "tonic." Most of them die a few days later. Terrorized, many happy home inmates request permission to leave. But their sons and relatives cannot look after them now as in days of old. They themselves have to make their hand-to-mouth living in the communes.

This is no doubt what Mao Tse-tung wants. For he has said: "The introduction of the supply and wage system, with wages issued to the individual instead of to the head of the family ... will break up the patriarchy with its bourgeois concept of rights."

THE CHURCHES

Reds Aim to Eliminate All Faiths

Is there freedom of religion on the Chinese mainland?

At first glance this seems quite a superfluous question. After only ten years of occupation of the Chinese mainland, the Chinese Communists expelled 99 % of the foreign missionaries, imprisoned hundreds of bishops, priests, and pastors, forced Buddhist monks and nuns to leave their monasteries, confiscated properties of all religious, bodies, took over thousands of missionary schools, imprisoned and killed tens of thousands of Christians. These facts should speak for themselves.

Yet there are still many people who persist in believing the Red propaganda that religious belief is respected on the mainland. An analysis of the Chinese Communist policy toward religions would show that their final goal is the annihilation of all faiths other than Marxism, the Communist "Bible."

Although it was stipulated in Article 88 of the "constitution" of the Peiping regime that "freedom of religious belief" is guaranteed to all citizens, the Chinese Communists continued to persecute priests and monks under such trumped-up charges as espionage, "counter-revolutionary" activities, and oppression of the masses. There has been an organized plan to wipe out all religions or to maintain only the most superficial vestiges of them. It is to make apostates out of believers, not martyrs, and any given religion is to be broken up from within as well as from without.

The first that bore the pressure from the regime were the Catholic Church and Protestant denominations. They made the first target to be eliminated from the land where materialism is to take the place of God.

Calumnies and Slander

Red persecution of the Catholic and Protestant Churches began at the end of the war with Japan and the simultaneous starting of nationwide Communist revolts. Their initial tactics was to create an atmosphere hostile to the churches and to destroy the popular esteem in which Christianity was held. To stir up the masses against the missions, Christianity was represented as an instrument of territorial conquest in the hands of the "capitalist states", i.e., the West, and as a bundle of superstitions invented by the priests, pastors and nuns to secure for themselves a good life at the expenses of the poor and ignorant.

The purpose was to sow seeds of confusion among the faithful and thus to cause degradation of the soul; and moral decadence among the Christians would make them more malleable to Communist exploitations. A false pride in "nationalism" was encouraged to bring politics into theology, and it was but another step to push the Christians into open action against the church now regarded as a cancer in the Chinese body politic. When the Christians' faith crumbles, so does the church, parish by parish, diocese by diocese.

This calumny campaign was accompanied by a series of public trials against the churches not on the ground of religious differences but always on some alleged action of their oppression of the people.

Attack on the Clergy

Anti-religious activities subsided for a while in 1949 when the Chinese Communists concentrated on occupying the whole expanse of the mainland. But soon they launched again a violent attack on the missionaries and native clergy. Thousands of foreign missionaries were expelled. Of the 3,112 Catholic missionaries on the Chinese mainland ten years ago, there remain now only one American, one French and two Koreans.

Chinese bishops, priests and pastors were arrested on some ridiculous charge of espionage or counter-revolutionary activities. The case of the "Catholic Youth Patriotic Corps," as created by the Chinese Communists, involved some ten priests and laymen from Peiping, Tientsin, Shihchiachuang and Tangshan. They were arrested in March 1949, and four of them were executed in October 1950 .

In the first few years after 1949, there were altogether 90 bishops or priests arrested, including three archbishops. The Communist persecution of the clergy attained its climax with the arrest and imprisonment of Bishop Kung Ping-mei in 1955, in the case of the alleged secret organization of Catholic youths. Afterwards, a similar fate was shared by more than 1,000 bishops, priests and laymen from Shanghai and other areas of Kiangsu, and from Chekiang, Hupeh, Kiangsi, Shantung, Anhwei, Fukien and Kwangtung provinces.

Triple Autonomy Movement

In the meantime the Chinese Communists engineered a so-called church reform movement as the last step toward accomplishing their complete control of the churches. It was a demand for the so-called triple autonomy," namely, self-government, self-support and self-propagation.

Self-government meant that the Catholic Church on the mainland must be governed entirely by Chinese without any interference from the Pope or foreign ecclesiastical authorities. Self-support signified that the Church in China was to receive no money from outside, but the Communist Government would undertake to provide for its needs. Self-propagation demanded that "Chinese Christians must discover for themselves and by themselves the treasures of the Gospel of Christ. They must get rid of Western theology and create a new theological system suitable to themselves. That is the only way of putting into practice in New China the (revolutionary) spirit of the Gospel of Christ" (New China News Agency, January 14, 1951).

A reform manifesto issued by a former YMCA official, Wu Yao-tsung, in the Autumn of 1950, called upon Chinese Protestants to sever ties with imperialism and create a "Chinese Church governed by Chinese." It was signed the first time by 1,529 church leaders and members of various Protestant denominations. On October 18, 1950 the 14th Protestant Annual Congress, convening in Shanghai, decided to speed up triple autonomy by sending an appeal to all the different denominations. On November 30 of the same year, the movement was followed up the Catholics of K uangyuan, Szechuan, under the instigation of a former Protestant newly converted to Catholicism. On January 23, 1951 the Diocese of Nanchang joined the movement and talked openly of the severing of economic and epistolary relations with the Pope. On February 9, 1951 the Catholics and Protestants of western Szechuan made a joint declaration: the Catholics and the Protestants were to create a new Church "pure of any imperialistic element.

Charges 'Imperialism'

While self-government and self-support aimed to "reform," the principle of self-propagation would entail doctrinal and spiritual evolutions and revolutions which would completely undermine the basic faith of Christianity. The "new" church would be no more than another subsidiary agency in the service of Communist interests.

A few specimens from the many articles and editorials on this movement will illustrate the church "reform" as the Communists see it.

"The Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches in China are under the domination of imperialism both in their organization and in their system, finances, ideology and institutions.

"The imperialistic elements want that the Church remains at the service of the American imperialists and of an international organization supported by the former" (NCNA, March 18, 1951).

"There are facts to prove that the American imperialists utilized the Catholic Church as a means of aggression in China.

"All this proves that there are many foreign missionaries who under the cover of propagation of faith devote themselves to the activities of special agents at the service of the American imperialists and of the reactionary Kuomintang (NCNA, January 18, 1951).

"Because the imperialists have exercised for a long time control over the higher agencies of the Church in Rome and in the USA… the Chinese Catholics' patriotic movement should develop and carryon an active struggle against them.

"No sincere Christian can tolerate the Church to which he belongs when it is utilized by imperialism as a tool for aggression against his own country.

"Chinese Catholics who love their country must have the courage and determination to break down the domination of all imperialistic elements and their representatives within the Church ... They must unmask all their intrigues of sabotage" (NCNA, January 8, 1951).

Priests labelled 'Agents'

"No doubt it is understood that there are differences between the special agents' reactionary activities and the question of religion, between the special agents hidden inside the religious bodies and the whole religious society... Christians must not consider the counter-reactionary activities of the People's Government as oppression of the Church ... such repressive measures have absolutely nothing to do with the religious question, and therefore, must have the ardent support of all the patriotic Christians." (People's Daily, November 20, 1950).

"Priests must make profound studies on politics and current events, develop the Christians' patriotic sentiments, and invite from time to time local government officials or progressive elements to speak on special subjects." (Directive of the Reformed Church of Szechuan).

A Communist official once wrote on a local paper: "The (Chinese) priests have a social value in that they have received generally a good education and excellent character formation .... From their early age, they have been used to carry out directives come from a hierarchy without discussion or discrimination ... In China people with such qualifications are rather rare. We hope to use them in the social field when we get rid of their foreign monitors."

The above presents a full spectrum of the tactics the Chinese Communists used against the Catholic and Protestant Churches. The same methods were applied against all the other religions, whether Islam, Buddhism, Taoism or Lamaism. The atrocities committed recently by the Chinese Communists in Tibet offer the newest example. The suppression of Chinese Moslems reached its climax in the Ma Chen-wu case early in 1959, although very few in the Free World heard of it.

Is it likely that the Communists will succeed in wiping out religions, especially Christianity, from the Chinese mainland? Facts show the contrary. It was true that the Communists expelled nearly all the foreign missionaries, took over the several thousands of schools, seminaries, cultural and charity institutions, and had quite a number of Christians, priests and even bishops trapped in the triple autonomy movement, yet there remain thousands and thousands of believers who continue to guide the people in the right way of Christ despite constant danger of imprisonment and even execution. It is safe to predict that in what the Roman Emperors and the Schismatic kings failed, the Communists will not have a better chance to succeed.

THE OVERSEAS CHINESE

Pawns In Red Expansion In SE Asia

The 14,000,000 overseas Chinese figure large in Peiping's programs for both overseas expansion and communization of the mainland. The Red Chinese policy towards the overseas Chinese is therefore centered on two main objectives: thorough exploitation of the overseas Chinese, first, as handy tools for subverting their host governments in Southeast Asia, and second, as an inexhaustible source of foreign exchange.

Every year, millions of dollars are expended on Red propaganda aimed at courting the overseas Chinese. Every overseas Chinese thus won over is a prospective Communist subversive agent. The Red propaganda themes vary from one target country to another, but the common ones are the appeal to patriotism and nationalism, eulogy of the achievements of the fatherland and attacks on the resident governments' discriminatory measures against overseas Chinese. These propaganda themes would have been successful had it not been for the Communists' own undoings.

The Numbers Game - What Do They Mean?

The Chinese Communists love to play with numbers. There were, for example, the campaign for removal of the "four pests," i.e., housefly, mosquito, rodent and sparrow, and the policy of "walking on two legs," meaning equal emphasis on modern technology and the age-old native method of producing vital goods such as iron and steel.

In the early years of the regime, the "five major campaigns" and "three great reforms" were household names the mere mentioning of which brought fear and apprehension. What did they mean?

The five major campaigns were:

- The "land reform" campaign.

- The "resist-America and help-Korea" campaign.

- The campaign for "suppression of counter-revolutionaries."

- The "three-anti and five-anti" campaign. The former, standing for anti-corruption, anti-waste and anti-bureaucratism, was originally devised as slogans for purges within the Communist party. The latter, meaning opposition to bribery, tax evasion, theft of state properties, sub-standard material or workmanship, and leakage of state economic information, was used as means to extort huge sums from private commercial and industrial enterprises.

- The "thought reform" campaign. The three great reforms were:

- The "agricultural reform" or collectivization movement.

- The "reform of handicraft trade," through which all handicraft workers were organized into 104,000 cooperatives.

- The "reform of privately owned commerce and industry," which ended in all private enterprises being turned into "joint state-private ownership."

The fact that the majority of the 14,000,000 overseas Chinese are anti-Communist is attributed to Peiping's own persistent policy of economic exploitation. The Reds have launched campaign after campaign to rob overseas Chinese of their hard-earned cash and their dependents on the Chinese mainland of their properties. To achieve their goal, the Communists have to resort to imprisonment, physical and mental torture and even murder.

Systematic Chinese Communist persecution of overseas Chinese dependents on the mainland began with the initiation of the infamous land reform. In the so-called "three-anti" and "five-anti" movements and the "suppression of counter-revolutionaries" that followed, overseas Chinese dependents and returned overseas Chinese were made to suffer the same tragic fate as "landlords," "ruffians," "exploiting class," and "Nationalist agents." They were made no exception in the final fate. However, those who were handed death sentences were usually granted a stay of execution so that their relatives overseas could be milked dry of possible remittances.

Persecution of Returnees

According to incomplete estimates by Communist newspapers in districts where overseas Chinese families predominate, during the few years preceding May 1955, no less than 110,000 overseas Chinese dependents and returned overseas Chinese were victimized in the brutal Red campaigns, over 200,000 "overseas Chinese landlords" placed under surveillance, and an inestimable number either kicked out of their homes empty handed, forced to join the army or sentenced to "labor reform." For 24 successive days in June 1957, Tzu Jan Daily News in Hongkong published daily the names of 766 overseas Chinese dependents and returned overseas Chinese in 12 counties in Kwangtung province, who were known to be executed, beaten or tortured to death by the Reds, or who committed suicide after suffering untold humiliations.

It has not been possible to arrive at an accurate estimate as to the total value of overseas Chinese and assets on the mainland confiscated by the Communists in the past decade. During the "land reform," however, few overseas Chinese properties escaped confiscation. Strictly speaking, buildings owned by overseas Chinese were protected by Communist "law," yet petty cadres assigned to "land reform" work seldom respected their own legal provisions.

The "five-anti" campaign afforded the Reds another pretext to prey on returned overseas Chinese engaged in small businesses. Under trumped up charges of "bribery," "tax evasion," "theft" of state property," leakage of state economic information" and "cheating in contracts," overseas Chinese businessmen were fined huge sums of money, imprisoned or killed. Some took their own lives because they were unable to pay the exorbitant fines. In Chungshan county alone, according to the independent Hongkong newspaper, Kung Sheung Daily News of November 17, 1952, more than 5,000 overseas Chinese business establishments were fined for one "crime" or another, and between 500 and 600 returned overseas Chinese businessmen were jailed for failure to pay their fines.

The total value of overseas Chinese property and assets confiscated on the mainland can hardly compare with that of overseas Chinese remittances seized by the Reds during the past ten years. The Communists have all along counted on overseas Chinese remittance as one of the main sources of badly needed foreign exchange. All conceivable methods, ranging from cajolery to naked blackmail, have been devised to channel overseas Chinese savings into Red pockets. During the "land reform," "five-anti" and "three-anti" campaigns, a large number of overseas Chinese dependents were held for ransom from their relatives abroad. This notorious extortion drive not only entailed widespread indignation among the overseas Chinese but also opened the eyes of the whole world to the predatory nature of the Peiping regime.

Milking Remittances

As a means of encouraging overseas Chinese remittances, the Reds in the early stage of their usurpation of the mainland conferred the title of overseas Chinese remittance "hero" and "model" on those who received the largest remittances from abroad. However, the more money they received from their overseas relatives the more they had to surrender to the Red authorities, either as "voluntary" contributions to the state, or as payment for compulsory purchase of bonds, or as frozen bank deposits.

Overseas Chinese remittances registered a sharp drop toward the end of 1957. Realizing that neither blackmail nor cajolery was any longer effective, the Reds adopted a more "practical" method to hasten the influx of overseas Chinese remittances. This was and s till is done by permitting recipients of overseas Chinese remittances to buy extra food rations, the amount· being proportionate to the size of the remittance. The beneficiaries of what the Reds call "preferential treatment for overseas Chinese families" have to pay twice as much for the extra food. However, in view of the prevailing acute food shortages, they have no alternative but fall victims to the open exploitation by the Reds. This accounts for the reason why overseas Chinese remittances have not yet come to a complete standstill.

Investment Trap

In an effort to absorb overseas Chinese capital, the Communists invited overseas industrial and business leaders to invest in the "reconstruction of their homeland promising "fat profits." For this purpose, a number of investment corporations were set up. Some of them boasted of "fat profits." Exactly how "fat" were their profits? An answer was provided by the February 20, 1954 issue of the Nan Fang Daily News of Canton. The Overseas Chinese Industrial Reconstruction Corporation, according to the Red paper, during the previous year had netted a gross profit of JMP $13,000,000;000. After deducting "income tax," purchase of state bonds, etc. there was hardly anything left that could be called dividend for the overseas Chinese shareholders.

The Chinese Communists desire not only overseas Chinese wealth but their labor as well. In 1954-55, four state-operated overseas Chinese collective farms and an overseas Chinese reclamation and grazing center were set up in Kwangtung, Fukien and Hainan Island. The collective farm in Wanchunsha, Kwangtung, today accommodates 1,600-odd returned overseas Chinese regimented into six "production teams." For a whole month's toil, each member is paid only the equivalent of US$2 as "pocket money."

On Oct. 6, last year, the People's Daily bragged about the rapid progress made by overseas Chinese in adapting themselves to the trying conditions of the collective farms—about how inexperienced farm hands had learned to till "the hard way," how members of women "shock" teams performed the same manual labor as that for men and how an aged returned overseas Chinese from Malaya daily carried heavy rice baskets to the work site more than a· mile away. From the Red description, one does not require much imagination to visualize the appalling plight of the overseas Chinese living under Communist rule.

Lures Students

Overseas Chinese students are another target for Red Chinese exploitation. They are lured to the mainland by rosy promises of scholarships and post-graduation employment. But once they set foot on Red Chinese soil, their illusions were shattered. The Reds make no effort to hide the fact that they are interested more in the students' "political correctness" than their academic standard. There is a marked difference in the treatment of students who receive remittances from home and those who do not.

While in school, most of the students' time is devoted to political indoctrination and "extra-curricular" labor services. How about the Communist promise of employment after graduation? In most cases, the students are assigned to productive labor or reclamation work in remote border regions. Disillusioned, most students ask permission to return to their homes overseas, but very few are permitted to leave the "people's paradise." Only those who were thoroughly indoctrinated and received special training were sent back to their host countries as vanguards of Chinese Communist infiltration and subversion.

THE SCOREBOARD

How Many Died in Communist Hands?

There is no authoritative source on the number of people killed by the Chinese Communists since they took power in 1949. The Reds themselves are not expected to admit their own guilt, even though their blood-dripping hands are there for everyone to see.

From the campaigns suppressing "counter-revolutionaries" to the recent genocide in Tibet, Peiping has relied on terror as the principal means to maintain its control over the masses. Some sources have put the total number of people who met their death under Chinese Communist tyranny at 30,000,000.

While there is no way to confirm that or any other figure, a look at the scoreboard will show that:

- Some 2,980,000, including both military and civilians, died in the actions leading up to Communist occupation of the mainland in 1949 and in subsequent mopping up operations. Guerrilla actions were numerous in late 1949 and the following year, particularly in the provinces of Fukien, Hunan, Kwangsi, Kwangtung, Szechuan, Kweichow and Yunnan, until they were completely put down by the Communists.

- Killing was the order of the day during the "land reform" campaign from 1949 through 1952. Tenants were instigated to denounce their landlords, and even "middle peasants," that is, those with only two or three acres to their name, were made the object of whipped up class struggle. Hysterics ruled in Communist staged "mass trials" which invariably ended in executions on the spot. At least 5,000,000 landlords, rich and middle peasants, and their families lost their lives.

- The "New Marriage Law," strange though it may seem to foreigners; took the toll of no less than 1,000,000 women. Promulgated on May 1, 1950, it was designed as the first step to break up the Chinese family system. The "State Council" issued a special directive on February 1, 1953, to "thoroughly implement the Marriage Law," and created a "Central Commission for Thorough Implementation of the Marriage Law Movement." The impact of this law upon an agrarian and conservative society was such that many women preferred to take their own lives rather than divorce their husbands and remarry under the order of local Communist cadres.

- The Korean war, which Peiping called the "resist-America and help-Korea campaign," exacted a heavy price from the Communists who claimed to have defeated the joint force of the United States and 15 other members of the United Nations. Excluding North Koreans, the "Chinese People's Volunteer Force" alone suffered 1,430,000 casualties.

- However, the campaign for suppression of counter-revolutionaries was the bloodiest of them all. On July 23, 1950, a joint directive issued by the "State Council" and the "Superme People's Court" listed four counts for charges against counter-revolutionaries, each of them could bring death to the offender. On February 21, 1951, Mao Tse-tung promulgated the "Regulations Governing the Punishment of Counter-Revolutionaries." Of the 21 articles in the law,11 articles including 17 paragraphs prescribe the firing squad. In the first stage of the campaign, from July 1950 to June 1952, some 7,000,000 persons were killed, including those who were directly or indirectly connected with the Kuomintang and the National Government, who served in the armed force or the police, or who indicated the slightest degree of dissatisfaction with the new regime.

On July 17, 1952, the "Ministry of Public Security" announced the "Temporary Provisions for Counter-Revolutionaries," and the second stage of placing such elements spared by the executioners in slave labor camps began. In the ensuing two years, 544,000 persons were labeled counter-revolutionaries and thrown into concentration camps. In the third stage from June 1954 to June 1955, the emphasis was on uncovering secret agents. The Communists said 750,000 cadres participated in the five man committees set up specially in all levels of CCP branches, and 3,000,000 Party members were mobilized to join the investigation work. No figures on total number of people killed was made available in the second and third stages.

- The "three-anti" and "five-anti" campaigns were aimed at the businessmen and industrialists on the mainland in 1950 and 1951. The heads of 460,000 private commercial and industrial enterprises, and some of their family members, were sentenced to exorbitant fines and various other punishments by the "people's courts." According to escapees, at least 7,000 persons took their own lives in Shanghai alone, unable to pay the heavy fines and hoping that their wife and children might be spared after their death.

- During the period of the "general line for the transition to socialism," the three major reforms were implemented on the Chinese mainland: that of agriculture, handicraft industry, and industry and commerce. No figure was ever released by Peiping on the number of people killed or jailed. There was also an apparent shift in the target of the reign of terror. Chang Ting-chen, chief procurator of the "Supreme People's Procuratorate," reported to the 2nd "National People's Congress" in April 1959 that, since 1955, of the total number of cases of arrest by political and legal organs, 70.9 percent were current sabotage and other criminal cases, while the remaining 29.2 percent were "counter-revolutionary cases of a historical nature." Lo Jui-ching, former "minister of public security" and secret police head, revealed in January 1958 that in the 19-month period from June 1956 to the end of 1957, some 100,000 counter-revolutionaries were arrested and the "political history" of 1,700,000 persons were "dealt with individually."