Letter from China: An interesting insight into the state of the Chinese Communist Party

We received this letter from the author of an article we published a few weeks ago, The Status of “Socially Vulnerable Groups” in China. It gives an interesting insight into the real state of the Chinese Communist Party. It shows how far this organisation has degenerated. In reality it has no real link to the Chinese Communists who organised the party in the early 1920s. The Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union had an immediate effect on the Chinese CP, which adopted Stalin’s theories of Socialism in One Country, the Two Stages, etc., but now after decades of being in power the degeneration has gone even further. As the letter point out, the older generation joined the party for their “beliefs”. In spite of the Stalinist degeneration many older Chinese Communists joined the party in the 1930s and 1940s believing it to be a genuine Communist Party, but now it has become a mere machine attached to the state apparatus and used for careerism and corruption. Faced with the growing social polarisation between the enriched bureaucracy and the ordinary working masses, the Chinese workers need to return to the revolutionary ideas that the early Chinese Communists based themselves on, the ideas of Lenin.

Dear Fred,

I feel very happy that my article interested you and is useful for the website. I will feel honoured when you publish it. When I read your email, I was touched by the word "comrade". I haven't heard anybody using this word in real life for around ten years and I didn't expect to hear the word here in Australia. Thank you for analysing the situation of China systematically. I want to tell you some of my personal experience.

My grandfathers, my father, and several of my uncles and aunts are all members of Chinese Communist Party. I think they joined the party for their beliefs. My husband is also a member, but he joined the party because of the possible benefits he would get from this in job-hunting and promotion. In fact, that is the reason why most of the party members from my generation join the party.

I applied to be a party member once in my undergraduate years and failed, not because I was not qualified, but because my parents didn't bribe the person who took charge of party recruitment.

As for the next generation, my 7-year-old nephew wears a red scarf (something which identifies one as a member of the Young Pioneers, the communist children’s organization) everyday but he does not know why he wears it and what a Young Pioneer is. And he totally has no idea of what socialism or communism are because that part has been removed from his textbook of moral education.

I remember when I was 6, I started to wear a red scarf and swore to the flag of the Young Pioneers together with my classmates that we would dedicate our lives to the lofty cause of communism. We could not understand what communism was at that time, but we were excited because we felt that we would be working for something beautiful.

Now almost twenty years have passed and everything has changed. This winter I went back to China. On the one hand, I enjoyed the reunion with my family and on the other hand, I felt so upset at what I observed. The gap between rich and poor exists and increases. Corrupt bureaucrats can spend 1,000 yuan on a dinner while a woman works 10 hours a day, 6 days a week in a private factory for a monthly salary of 400 yuan.

In big cities, there is a TV set in every cell of the restroom in luxurious restaurants, but in the countryside some peasants can only make their roof with straw. My best friend in high school told me that one of her jobs was collecting agricultural tax. She hated the job to death because she was to told to collect tax from poor households in the countryside by deceiving and threatening. And as far as I know, corrupt bureaucrats stash a large amount of the agricultural tax in their own pockets through various means.

Having witnessed all those evil things, I can no longer categorize my country as a socialist country.

Best,

Anfanger
January 2004