Born in Indonesia, my father, Chen Xinpan, came to study in China at the beginning of the last century. He studied at the Jimei School, founded by Mr. Chen Jiageng, and then graduated from the Jinan University. Allured by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) dazzling propaganda, my father joined the CCP and initiated farmer movements in various places in Fujian, including Haicheng, Anxi, etc. to instigate farmers to establish the so-called Farmer’s Association, in an attempt to usurp political power by violence.

When the Kuomintang (the Chinese Nationalist Party, KMT) carried out a purge to eliminate the communists from its organization in 1927, my father was arrested in Haicheng county. As my grandfather was a business tycoon in Jakarta, Indonisia, with intervention of the Jakarta Overseas Chinese Chamber of Commerce, my father was bailed out and returned to Indonesia where he was born.

Dedicating Himself to an Educational Career and Newspaper Publication

After returning to Indonesia, my father dedicated himself to cultural and educational projects for overseas Chinese. In 1928, he took over the Jakarta Xinhua School, a private overseas Chinese school, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, and became the fifth Principal of the school. With my father’s persistently raising money from various circles and the entire faculty’s holistic endeavor, the school revived and became one of the most famous overseas Chinese schools in Jakarta. While running the school, my father, along with his friends, established the Nanqiao Daily in Singapore and the Life Daily in Jakarta. As a man of Chinese descent, my father dedicated himself to promotion of Chinese culture in Indonesia, and was highly regarded by local people. In addition, during the Sino-Japanese War, he shielded a group of intellectuals who fled to Indonesia from China, including celebrities such as Mr. Chen Jiageng, Mr. Hu Yuzhi, and others, at the risk of losing his own life.

My father often supported the CCP with non-party-member status, as if he had been a Bolshevik outside the CCP. After the Xi'an Incident [1], the CCP tried to raise funds overseas in the name of fighting against the Japanese to save China. Besides their personal contribution, my father and his compatriots also made good use of their social status to urge others to make contributions.

My father was warmly received by China’s first Ambassador to Indonesia, Wang Renshu (pseudonym Baren). After that my father became a staunch supporter of China’s Ambassadors to Indonesia. He took initiative to make public the lies fabricated by the Chinese Communist regime on behalf of the Chinese Embassy. Unfortunately, Baren was classified as a rightist in 1957 during his tenure as a vice- minister. After he was sent to the remote countryside for reeducation, he disappeared from society, and all of his acquaintances lost contact with him. It was said that he finally died in the countryside.

Becoming a Second-Class Citizen after Returning to China

Deluded by the Chinese Communist regime’s fabrications, many overseas Chinese traveled to China, one after another. Thousands of young overseas Chinese thus left their birthplaces and families to go to Mainland China. Among them were mainly the Chinese in Southeast Asia and adjacent countries. At least several hundred thousand, perhaps as many as one million, returned. Once back, they were prohibited from leaving China, and could not return to their birthplaces. Being classified as people with foreign relations and born in bourgeoisie overseas Chinese families, they were cheated by the Chinese government and became second-class Chinese citizens. They were not allowed to enter military service, or to enter military academies, hi-tech related departments at colleges such as the Beijing Aviation College and the Beijing Institute of Technology, or the sensitive departments including the Department of Nuclear Energy or the Department of Radio and Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University. In addition, they were banned from working with intelligence departments and confidential departments of government agencies.

Overseas Chinese were discriminated against in education and career in China; therefore, most of them had no choice but to enter the Normal Universities or vocational colleges. Apart from the discrimination in education, some overseas Chinese were sent to ranches dedicated for overseas Chinese in Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan and Hainan Island to cultivate wasteland there. According to the CCP’s regulations on registered permanent residence, people were not entitled to move to other places at will. As a result, many overseas Chinese were forced to be separated from their spouses; children were not able to live with their elderly parents and siblings could not live under the same roof. The propaganda and promises made by Chinese embassies overseas are nothing but base and baseless lies.

My father was deceived by the Chinese Communist government so badly that he moved to Beijing and settled down there in 1964, which resulted in my family’s returning to China (I went to study in China in 1958). Many other overseas Chinese were also misled to move to CCP-ruled Mainland China, as if they were moths flying to a flame. When the Great Cultural Revolution began in 1966, various kinds of struggles were launched enthusiastically nationwide, and people began fighting relentlessly against one another. Overseas Chinese were deeply shocked by those bloody political movements; and the tide of returning to the motherland was thus stopped.

The common charges for the CCP used to persecute overseas Chinese during the Great Cultural Revolution included spying, secretly providing information to foreign governments, hiding in the revolutionary army, being bourgeoisie dissidents and supporters of the bourgeoisie, etc. My father's close friends and schoolmates were no exception. Among them were Mr. Zhuang Xiquan and Mr. Zhuang Mingli, overseas Chinese from Singapore, who were once Vice-Ministers of the PRC’s(Pwopl’s Republic of China- the name the CCP gave to its dictatorship) Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee (OCAC), Mr. Hu Yuzhi, Chairman of the Democracy Alliance, and Mr. Lu Xinyuan, an overseas Chinese from Singapore, who was a Director General of the Department of Education at the OCAC, etc.

Passing Away in Grief and Confusion

My father returned to Mainland China and settled down in Beijing area before the Great Cultural Revolution began. His landlords, Su Baiwan and his wife, were an elderly couple in their eighties. In the early phase of the Great Cultural Revolution, his landlords were deprived of their properties and then publicly criticized and denounced. Half of their hair was forcibly shaved off to humiliate them. Even their daughter, who lived in the same courtyard, was sucked into the struggle. In the end, the courtyard houses were confiscated, and the elderly couple and their daughter’s family were forcibly dispatched to a farming village. Within days, the elderly couple was tormented to death. My father was frightened by the devilish Red Guards, who shuffled in and out of the courtyard. He was in an extremely panicky situation all day long.

Back then my study at Jilin University in Changchun was suspended for the Cultural Revolution. We were taking labor reform at an army reclamation farm in the Great Northern Wilderness of China. If my father, who used to be an advocate of the CCP, started to regret having asked us to come back to China at the very moment when he arrived in Beijing, then the unprecedented catastrophe of the Great Cultural Revolution should have made him absolutely despair of the CCP. His classmates, friends, or the high-level CCP’s cadre members who had received help from him in the past were all hardly able to protect themselves. Whenever something unexpected happened, people as old and politically inexperienced as they were could not do anything but wait to be trampled upon. At the same time, he was also worried about me. The regret, helplessness and fear tangled with one another, plunging my father into a deep depression. He was hit by a stroke on December 31, 1968. After that day, he never again opened his eyes or said another word.

I rushed to the hospital from the remote Great Northern Wilderness. I called him in a soft voice; his eyelids jiggled a little but he was too weak to open the eyes. Only tears ran out from the corners of his eyes. I was his only son. He has infused all of his love into me and held great aspirations for me. However, he didn’t have a chance to take a final glimpse of me when he was about to pass away. He left, and he left with confusion and bewilderment about the CCP. There was neither a memorial service nor a funeral ceremony. My father, once an all-powerful man in Chinese society, quietly left the world.

I Declare my Father’s Party Withdrawal

Since his arrest by the Kuomintang in 1927, the CCP had considered my father as having voluntary withdrawn from the CCP. Although his membership was never reinstated, the mark of the beast representing the CCP’s evil cult had been branded on him. After the CCP seized political power, my father utilized his prestige to encourage many Indonesia-born Chinese to return to CCP-ruled China. He himself also practiced what he had preached. Although my father felt discontent with the CCP’s policies late in his life, he couldn’t clearly recognize the CCP’s evil nature. The “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party” published by The Epoch Times provides me an ideal way to free my father’s soul from its endless bitterness. Herewith, I would like to declare the withdrawal from the party on my father’s behalf, hoping that his soul can be soothed and extricated from the evil’s shackles for ultimate rebirth.

Note:

[1] Xi'an Incident - On December 4 1936, the nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek was held prisoner by warlords Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, forcing the KMT to enter an anti-Japan alliance with Mao Zedong's communists.