Chinese Communist Chairman Mao Zedong once boasted that the USSR’s today would be China’s tomorrow.

This week, as anniversaries pass marking key steps in the fall of the Soviet power that many had thought was unmatched, a turn of events in China suggests that Mao may, in fact, have been right.

Enter Gorbachev

Twenty years ago Friday, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev entered the world centre stage, taking post as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. In the following six years, the world was introduced to two Russian words – “perestroika”, or restructuring, and “glasnost”, openness.

It also witnessed the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the elections of democratic governments in Eastern Europe, the reunion of a divided Germany, the withering of the Warsaw Pact, and finally, the demise of the USSR. In December 1991, Gorbachev went on television to announce he was stepping down as Soviet president. From that moment on, both Gorbachev’s political life and the giant red empire that had lasted for seventy years became history.

Gorbachev was regarded as a "paradox" - the convinced Communist who killed Communism in his effort to revitalize it. Gorbachev’s “perestroika”, which was intended to help establish a market economy by encouraging limited private ownership and profitability in Soviet industry and agriculture, produced no economic miracles because the Communist control system and over-centralization of power and privilege were maintained.

At the same time, “glasnost” opened the closet for the airing of the USSR’s bloody history, which undermined the legitimacy of the authoritarian power in the eyes of the people. In fact, Gorbachev’s fatal flaw may have been his Don Quixote-esque belief that the Soviet power, which was based on deception, violence, and destruction of private property and culture, could be democratized.

Gorbachev’s “new thinking” inspired the reform and openness ideas of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the 1980’s. However, while hailed in the West, Gorbachev has been scorned by his former comrades in the world’s largest remaining communist country. Chinese leader Hu Jintao is rumoured to have said recently that China would serve better to follow the examples of North Korea and Cuba in terms of ideological control.

'Glasnost' with Chinese Characteristics

Beijing has avoided the idea of Gorbachev’s “glasnost” as if it was the plague, and has continued to keep a tight grip on press and speech freedom. The government has earned regular condemnation from the likes of Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders for its repression of journalists and Internet writers. In 2002, Reporters Without Borders ranked China second last in the world in press freedom, ahead of only North Korea. However, recent developments show that in the era of Internet, it is impossible for the Chinese Communist Party to maintain complete control of information and isolate Chinese people from the outside world.

The best example is the current wave of Chinese withdrawing from the Party that was prompted by an editorial series on the history and nature of the Chinese Communist Party published by The Epoch Times on November 18. Following publication of "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party," nearly 200,000 people have posted renunciations of their communist membership on the website of the Chinese Epoch Times. And the number is skyrocketing daily. On Tuesday alone, the number topped 21,000, or one person every 4 seconds.

	(The Epoch Times)

The "Nine Commentaries" have generated interest outside China as well, including in Russia where leading newspaper Izvestia has published the Russian translation of the editorials.

Similar to Gorbachev’s glasnost, the "Nine Commentaries" have ignited discussion on taboo topics, like the Communist Party’s history of killing and deception and its destruction of traditional culture. The difference in China, of course, is that the discussion is clandestine and the Chinese Communist Party is fighting bitterly to stop the spread of the series. An article on a Chinese state-run web site recently called the Nine Commentaries “the most serious challenge to the Chinese government in history.”

Chinese communist quitters have included senior party members and an Olympic medallist. Workplaces have quit in groups. All of this has shaken the Party leadership to the core.

Will the fate of the Russian bear repeat with the Chinese dragon? Will Mao’s ironic prediction come true? Time will tell.

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