A young Chinese man in a suit walks past, and Winny Zhao walks along with him. She’s a tall, middle-aged woman with long, wavy hair.
They have a spirited chat, “ok, sure, I’ll quit,” says the man with a laugh, after they walk about ten metres together. Winny returns with his name, “Kevin”, and adds it to the list.
A young lady goes by, and Liu Jie, middle-aged but a little shorter than Winny, talks to her. “I know this Tuidang [Chinese for ‘quitting the party’] has my best intentions in mind,” the young lady says. “OK, I agree to quit. I’m very happy, thank you.” She turns out to be a student, and uses the name Zhan Shan.
Another young lady goes by. “I don’t need to quit,” she tells Winny. “I only joined the Young Pioneers.” Winny replies: “You have to renounce that pledge you made to the party.” “OK, thanks.” She uses the name “Ada”.
The site is in Burwood, an area in Sydney’s inner West with a lot of Chinese migrants. It’s one of about ten sites across Sydney, where groups of well-dressed Chinese gather to encourage Chinese people to resign from the CCP. Their signs say “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) isn’t the same as China, loving the Party isn’t loving China” and there are message boards about the Party’s various political campaigns. The ladies are all practitioners of Falun Gong, and they hand out information materials, and copies of The Epoch Times.
It’s about half-past one in the afternoon and the smiling ladies have 34 names on their clipboard, with about two hours to go. They’re mostly pen names like De Fu (obtain fortune), Ping An (peace and safety), and others. The signatories tick which party organisation they want to quit: the Young Pioneers for primary school children, the Youth League for high school, or full Communist Party membership.
The movement began in November 2004 with the publication of the editorial series Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party by The Epoch Times. The series ‘exposes the Party’s violence and its political campaigns since its founding in 1949. With the ‘Nine Commentaries’ release, people were invited to “withdraw” their Party membership via the website, by phone or by fax to Epoch Times offices and “Quit the CCP Service Centres” around the world, like this one in Burwood.
Withdrawals Increasing
The tally is now over 57 million, climbing by tens of thousands each day.
The online messages are often very deep. A lady named Pang Junmin posted a message in May this year describing how she was fired from her job and her husband’s salary cut in half because they defied the one-child policy and secretly had a second child. She identified herself as a mainland Chinese living in America.
A man named Qinshui from Gansu Province posted a message in May, saying he was encouraged by his wife after she spoke to Falun Gong practitioners while in Hong Kong. “The evil party will be destroyed by the heavens,” it reads. “I will not be its partner in the grave.”
Sydney Falun Gong spokesperson John Deller summed up what Tuidang meant for Falun Gong practitioners last week, at a forum in NSW State Parliament marking the ten-year persecution of the group.
“There was a realisation that the only way to stop the persecution was to stop the persecutor’s ability to persecute, in effect disintegrating the Communist Party,” Mr Deller said.
“Our thoughts will either help to disintegrate the Communist Party or help to sustain it.”
It was a realisation that was long overdue, according to Dr Wang Juntao. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison for his involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and continues to campaign for democracy in China.
“In 1989, most Chinese, including many CCP members, realized that the CCP was an anti-people organization, and they did their best to overthrow the CCP's rule,” Mr Juntao said.
He said launching ‘Tuidang’ was a good move. “The Communist Party should be afraid because the message is very clear that Chinese do not accept the CCP's rule.”
A great deal of high-profile Chinese figures have quit using their real names: Human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, former Shanxi Province official Jia Jia, and Sun Yanjun, Professor of Psychology of Religion at the University of Hawaii.
The movement also has the support of overseas Chinese dissidents, like former government official Ren Xuebing, who quit the Party in 2006. He was a journalist during the Tiananmen Square Massacre and took photos of the event, and afterwards spent 16 months in re-education through labour. Now he lives in Campsie, in Sydney’s inner West.
“This Quit the Party movement is just great,” Mr Ren said. “It’s making the Communist Party very nervous. So many people have quit the party. The day when it is destroyed is getting closer.”
Chen Yonglin, former first secretary of the Sydney Chinese consulate and prominent defector, quit the Party with his wife on June 2005.
“Let us be brave and join hands together to shake off all the fear, terror and grief laid upon us by the ruling Communist regime in China,” his statement reads.
To see it all happening just takes a visit to a site like the one in Burwood.
Auntie Zhu, a nimble old lady of 73 with a weathered and wrinkly face, joins the five other ladies at the site. She had been up at the train station on her own, and she’s collected more than ten withdrawals, written by hand on a piece of paper.
The simplicity of her method is striking. Could these cheery, clipboard-wielding ladies really be a threat to the powerful Communist Party?
The regime seems to think so. Last year, the Chinese Consul General in New York, Peng Keyu, candidly spoke of how he had secretly organised mobs of up to 600 people to attack volunteers at a Quit the CCP Service Centre in Flushing, New York.
"They came over after they fought with Falun Gong and I shook hands with them one by one and thanked them," Peng was recorded as saying.
In another case, China Eastern Airlines pilot Yuan Sheng was reported to the police after suggesting to a Shanghai airport staff member that he quit the Party. Six police were soon on the scene, saying it was a matter of ‘state security’, and tried to stop his flight. But the plane was full of passengers, and there were no replacement pilots. The police allowed him to depart, and after arriving in Los Angeles, he applied for a protection visa.
There is no doubt in Liu Jie’s mind that her efforts will help bring about the Party’s downfall.
“The Communist Party is like a big, shaky building and each of its members is one of the bricks,” she says. “We’re taking those bricks out one by one.”
Ben Hurley is a Sydney-based journalist.
