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| political repression in the peoples republic of china | |
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China is not a country but is an animal farm where one person keeps bullying all the animals and keeps telling them what to do, when to eat, what to eat and when to sleep and how to sleep. It is country which mindlessly killed more than 10 million of its population to move toward industrialization. Instead of growing food to eat their leader Mao pushed for rapid reforms and sent all the working population to mines to extract iron ore for its plants. China is the most suppressed country of all. China is a disaster waiting to happen. Their internet is strictly monitored and regulated. "At the end of May 1966, Mao set up a new office, the Cultural Revolution Small Group, to help run the Purge. Madame Mao headed it for him with Mao's former secretary, Chen Bo-da its nominal director, and purge expert Kang Sheng its "adviser". This office, in addition to Lin Biao and Chou En-lai, formed Mao's latest inner circle. Under the new cabal, the cult of Mao was escalated to fever pitch. Mao's face dominated the front page of People's Daily, which also ran a column of his quotations every day. Soon, badges started appearing with Mao's head on them, of which some 4.8 billion were manufactured. More copies of Mao's Selected Works were printed – and more portraits of him (1.2 billion) – than China had inhabitants. It was this summer that the Little Red Book was handed out to everyone. It had to be carried and brandished on all public occasions, and its prescriptions received daily. In June, Mao intensified the terrorisation of society. He picked as his first instrument of terror young people in schools and universities, the natural hotbeds for activists. These students were told to condemn their teachers and those in charge of education for poisoning their heads with "bourgeois ideas" – and for persecuting them with exams, which henceforth were abolished. The message was splashed in outsized characters on the front page of People's Daily, and declaimed in strident voices on the radio, carried by loudspeakers that had been rigged up everywhere, creating an atmosphere that was blood-boiling and blood-curdling. Teachers and administrators in education were selected as the first victims because they were the people instilling culture and because they were the group most conveniently placed to offer up to the youthful mobs. The young were told that their role was to "safeguard" Mao, although how their teachers could possibly harm "the great Helmsman", or what perils might beset him, was not disclosed. Nevertheless, many responded enthusiastically. Taking part in politics was something no one had been allowed to do under Mao, and the country was seething with frustrated activists who had been denied the normal outlets available in most societies, forbidden even to sit around and argue issues. Now, suddenly, there seemed to be a chance to get involved. To those interested in politics, the prospect was tremendously exciting. On June 2, a group from a middle school in Peking put up a wall poster, which they signed with the snappy name of Red Guards, to show that they wanted to safeguard Mao. Their writing was full of remarks like: "Stuff human feelings! We will be brutal!" and "We will strike you (Mao's enemies) to the ground and trample you!" The seeds of hate that Mao had sown were ready for reaping. Now he was able to unleash the thuggery of these infected teenagers, the most malleable and violent element of society. To make sure that students were available to carry out his wishes, Mao ordered schooling suspended from June 13. "Now lessons are stopped," he said, and young people "are given food. With food they have energy and they want to riot. What are they expected to do if not to riot?" Violence broke out within days. On June 18, scores of teachers and cadres at Peking University were dragged in front of crowds and manhandled, their faces blackened, and dunce's hats put on their heads. They were forced to kneel, some were beaten up, and women were sexually molested. Similar episodes happened all over China, producing a cascade of suicides. Mao orchestrated these events from the provinces. He had left the capital the previous November as soon as he had set the Purge in motion. Peking was no longer safe: it was full of foes he wanted to purge, and uncomfortably close to Russian troops on the Outer Mongolia border. For more than eight months, Mao stayed down south, travelling incessantly. He was also relaxing and storing up energy for the coming tempest. That June, while mayhem was rising, he spent some time in a particularly serene villa that he had never been to, outside his home village of Shaoshan. He had ordered this villa built during his previous visit seven years before. While swimming in a reservoir there, he had been much taken by the secluded beauty of the surroundings, and said to the provincial boss: "Mm, this place is pretty quiet. Would you build a straw hut here for my retirement?" As the man was soon purged, nothing was done until Mao brought it up again a year later, in the depth of the famine. So began "Project 203", the building of a giant steel and cement edifice called Dripping Grotto. The mountain range was sealed off, and the local peasants evicted. A helicopter pad and a special railway line were planned, and an earthquake and atom bomb-proof building, with shock-absorbers, was later incorporated. Altogether, Mao stayed here for 11 days in that violent June, and never again. Though he was just on the edge of his native village, Mao did not meet a single villager. A little girl had caught a glimpse of him in his car, and told her family. Police descended at once, and warned the family: "You didn't see Chairman Mao! Don't you dare to say that again!" By the end of June, he was ready to head back to Peking and start the next stage of his purge. En route, he stopped at Wuhan, where on July 16 he swam for more than an hour in the Yangtze, watched by tens of thousands of people. Like his swim a decade before, this was to send the message to his foes that, at 72, he had the health, strength and the will for a gigantic fight. Having cranked up his media to ballyhoo this swim to the maximum, even making it famous abroad, Mao returned to Peking on July 18. He adopted a hands-on approach, frequently chairing meetings with the Small Group that ran the Purge, and meeting daily with Chou En-lai, who was in charge of day-to-day business. On August 1 he wrote to the first group of Red Guards, who had vowed in their posters to "be brutal" and to "trample" Mao's enemies, to announce his "fiery support". He circulated this letter, together with the bellicose Red Guard posters, to the Central Committee, telling these high officials that they must promote the Red Guards. Many of these officials were actually on Mao's hit list, but for now he used them to spread terror – one that would soon engulf themselves. Following Mao's instructions, these officials encouraged their children to form Red Guard groups, and these children passed the word to their friends. Red Guard groups mushroomed as a result, invariably headed by the children of high officials. Learning from their fathers and friends that Mao was encouraging violence, the Red Guards immediately embarked on atrocities. On August 5, in a Peking girls' school packed with high officials' children, (which Mao's two daughters had attended), the first known death by torture took place. The headmistress, a 50-year-old mother of four, was kicked and trampled by the girls, and boiling water was poured over her. She was ordered to carry heavy bricks back and forth. As she stumbled past, she was thrashed with leather army belts with brass buckles, and with wooden sticks studded with nails. She soon collapsed and died. Afterwards, leading activists reported to the new authority. There were not told to stop – which meant carry on. A more explicit incitement to violence soon came from Mao himself. On August 18, dressed in army uniform for the first time since 1949, he stood on Tiananmen Gate to review hundreds of thousands of Red Guards. This was when the Red Guards were written about in the national press and introduced to the nation, and the world. A leading perpetrator of atrocities in the girls' school where the headmistress had just been killed was given the single honour of putting a Red Guard armband on Mao. The dialogue that followed was made public: Chairman Mao asked her: "What's you name?" She said "Song Bin-bin." Chairman Mao asked: "Is it the Bin as in "Educated and Gentle"?' She said: "Yes." Chairman Mao said: "Be Violent!" Song Bin-bin changed her name to "Be Violent", and her school changed its name to "The Red Violent School". Atrocities now multiplied in schools and universities. They started in Peking, then spread across the country, as Peking Red Guards were sent all over China to demonstrate how to do things like thrash victims and make them lick their own blood off the ground. After terror in schools, Mao directed his Red Guards to fan out into society at large. The targets at this stage were the custodians of culture, and culture itself. On August 18, Mao stood next to Lin Biao on Tiananmen Square while Lin called on Red Guards throughout the country to "smash. . . old culture". As in many revolutions, puritans turned on the softer and more flamboyant. Long hair, skirts and shoes with any hint of high heels were pounced on in the streets, and sheared by scissors-wielding teenagers. From now on, only flat shoes, and uniform-like, ill-fitting jackets and trousers, in only a few colours, were available." Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (Random House, $59.95) In today's world people are actually proud of their countries' culture and religion, including China. THe majority of the people in China are very patriotic, only a very small fraction dislike it. Many western nations also face this kind of situation. You can't expect everyone to like the same thing. EXTERNAL LINKS
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