Each time people celebrate more withdrawals from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), they are celebrating the rebirth of more Chinese people.
Chinese people have suffered for decades under the autocracy and tyranny of the CCP. I am one of the innumerable Chinese whose lives were, or still are, turned into a nightmare by the CCP. Now that I am in a free nation, I never want to look back. But the horrible past has never stopped haunting me.
I was born into an affluent family, which, according to the CCP, was a "brand of class" that I'd bear for my whole life. In addition to that, I was also doomed for having families and relatives who were imprisoned or killed by the CCP, or who lived outside mainland China. In those years in communist China, a person bearing those labels was destined to a most horrible future, no matter how hard he tried to show his obedience.
The CCP worships violence. The way it maintains its bloody autocracy is to impose great pressure and terror on people. Continuous "class struggle", realized by frequent violent "movements", therefore became a high priority of the CCP. As the CCP boasts, such movements were meant to "kill one to warn others". Every time the CCP decided to "kill one," one or more of my family members, social relations or myself would be involved. These movements did successfully warn the people.
Now let me tell you more about the "warning" effect. My husband and I worked in a scientific research institute where intellectuals abounded. Early in the Cultural Revolution, the institute was taken over by a team sent by the CCP central committee, and later ruled by the military. Then the CCP sent a so-called "Workers' Propaganda Team," or the "Workers' Propaganda Team for Mao Zedong Thought". The team, consisting of dozens of workers, was sent to assume authority for the institute, or, as they called it, to ensure that the working class leads everything.
The military people were ferocious, and rudely berated people at will. They stared wildly at everyone, trying to find out possible "class enemies". The Workers' Propaganda Team, on the other hand, reminded everyone first thing in the morning, "I am the working class. We are here to rule you stinky intellectuals." We gradually became used to such insults and learned to be numb to them.
I still remember an urgent assembly of staff and workers held in our institute. The soldiers guarding the assembly site made us nervous. People were led to shout "Be lenient to those who confess their crimes. Severely punish those who refuse to do so" again and again. Then the host yelled, "Bring the counterrevolutionary and secret agent of Kuomintang, so-and-so to the stage." At once a few soldiers dragged the person to the front of the stage, and made him stand on a desk. We looked at each other in consternation as no one had expected that person would be labeled as counterrevolutionary.
After that, each department was required to hold an internal meeting for everyone to confess. At first, no one knew what to confess. Then someone shiveringly broke the fierce silence with the confession that he drank some wine with his friends when Stalin died in 1953. Another person followed him and said he used to work as a clerk in the East Garden office of the president in Nanjing City for a short period of time after Japan surrendered in the World War II.
Everyone racked their brains for confessions while the host of the meeting kept threatening that he knew some people were hiding something.
In this manner, the class-enemies were constantly arrested. People were panic-stricken and everyone was in fear. Those with bad family backgrounds or complicated social connections were at even greater risk. No one knew whether he or she would be the next one being hit.
In the middle of the night, our household's door was smashed; spot checks were conducted on residential registration. Our family, as a focal point for the authorities, frequently received spot checks. Because my husband, a patriotic Chinese living overseas, was against the working team's careless persecution of people, he was denounced as the biggest on-going anti-revolutionary in his working unit. Consequently, our whole family, from young to old, were closely monitored and followed.
The more horrifying it was, the more the anti-revolutionary slogans appeared in the work unit, which often took the form of drawing an X on the words "Chairman Mao." Once such a slogan was discovered, regardless of whether it was daytime or nighttime, the high-volume speaker announced a big meeting. The police cars came with loud alarms to arrest people. Investigations found that many times it was little children who played practical jokes. Children in my family had to endure a thorough pocket check before heading out, as they were not allowed to carry any pens. We warned the children again and again, "Never bring a disaster."
Once, at the staff cafeteria, while an old engineer was with a few-people picking vegetable leaves from a soup in a big wood barrel, he made a joke saying,"The more you scoop, the more you get," which was regarded as being against the even allocation rule in socialism. Because of this sentence, he was seriously condemned. Everyone was scared, daring not to say a word, thinking they would be safer this way. That turned out not to be true either.
In my office, a colleague took a paragraph from Chairman Mao on condemning bureaucracy and laid it on the table. Next to it, there was a newspaper with a picture of Chairman Mao. This was exposed as using Mao's words to attack Mao, which was a huge problem. Immediately his home was searched and property was confiscated. This terrified everyone. We locked everything in the office table including pen and paper into drawers. The whole office looked very strange with bare table surfaces.
During this unending horror, suicide occurred frequently. One evening, right after dinner time, a loud noise was heard. An old rightist engineer jumped from the third floor and died on the scene. Another colleague, who was normally very quiet and cowardly, and who at the time had not been affected by the persecution, hanged himself behind a door. This was categorized as having "committed suicide because of being terrified of his own crime." The only reason was that he was a policeman for the Kuomintang when he lost his job in Shanghai. Some others took poisons and some cut arteries. Whilst some died, some were rescued.
Another characteristic of our thousand-person work unit was that many people suffered from mental disorders, brought on by the high pressure of the CCP's tyranny. The serious ones went in and out of mental hospitals several times. Every office had persons with mental illness. In other words, every one suffered from it, the only difference being in the degree of sickness. Yes, under the autocracy of the CCP, the whole country had turned into a madhouse or a big prison. My family was facing great danger, so we had to take a great risk. The whole family applied to emigrate. If the application was not granted, we could be condemned as "try in vain to betray the country to give in to the enemies." At that time, it was the end of the Cultural Revolution, and prior to the reform and opening up to the outside world. Our family finally emigrated to Hong Kong. We value this freedom that was difficult to obtain; we strove for it and cheered for it.
In 1997, the evil hand of the CCP was extended to Hong Kong. Even at sixty years of age, we decided to move to somewhere far away. We deeply regretted that a free and prosperous Hong Kong had lost its glory. Our 1.3 billion fellow Chinese living in hardship must split from the CCP in order to live a free life with dignity. Please withdraw from the CCP as soon as possible. The CCP, which has committed enormous crimes, will surely be punished by heaven's will and divine spirits. Heaven will not let the evil CCP be rampant too much longer.
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