I often hear my Chinese friends talk about their daily conflicts, how tenant and owner or mother-in-law and daughter-in-law cannot get along with each other. In general they believe that these conflicts are natural and cannot be resolved.
This reminds me of another common mentality of mainland Chinese nowadays. A lot of mainland Chinese think there is nothing wrong with the communist regime's killing, corruption, and dictatorship.
Party Culture vs. Traditional Culture
Their theory, or more accurately the theory implanted into their minds by the regime, is that human nature is selfish, so every government is selfish too, every politician is cruel, every government is the same. One should think about one's own interests after obtaining power, all human beings are the same and it is normal for the communist regime to use corruption for money and kill for power.
Indeed, selfishness is human nature, conflicting interests do exist between different groups, such as employer and employee, tenant and owner, landlord and farmer and even in the same family between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. But conflicts can be resolved or intensified. The culture plays a crucial role in guiding people in how to handle their conflicts.
Traditional Chinese culture, including Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism promote virtue and treating others benevolently. It is easy for people to resolve their conflicts with this kind of attitude.
On the contrary, communist theory emphasizes class struggle, and believes that it is impossible to resolve the conflicts between classes. It promotes violence.
Although class struggle is not officially promoted in China now, after reigning over 50 years with campaigns such as the Anti-rightist and the Cultural Revolution, it has already become part of the current culture in China, and people call this the party culture.
Subtle Indoctrination of Struggle
This culture promotes hatred, it amplifies and intensifies conflicts. A small conflict will lead to a life and death struggle. In the literary works created in such a culture, we can clearly see this kind of guidance, even children's rhymes cannot escape the fate of being used for such hatred education.
For example, in order to instigate the farmers' hatred toward the "landlord class," one rhyme was written, "The tiger does not like to eat people, it only eats landlords."
Thus it is not hard for people to understand why so many landlords were killed by farmers in past political campaigns, and sometimes the death of the landlord is not enough, their whole family was often killed.
The mutually dependent relationship between landlord and farmer has existed in China for thousands of years, and it has never developed into a life and death struggle, but the communist regime made it happen in just a few years.
Tiananmen Square Massacre
The communist regime promotes its party culture for the sake of maintaining its power. The 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre is a good example. The students wanted a dialogue, cessation of corruption and democracy, but in the regime's eyes, it means weakening the ruling power.
The regime does not want any dialogue and it could not provide an excuse for the corruption either, so it chose to kill, a simple and convenient way to protect itself. But how did it explain this massacre to the people? The regime said that it cracked down on "anti-revolutionary riots."
Most Chinese people have been brainwashed with class struggle theory, so this excuse was enough to block their minds and mouths. In the party culture, there are no words such as tolerance or concession, nor does it believe there is a necessity to conciliate social conflicts.
Even when not facing conflicts, the regime also adopts its struggle theory to handle social groups, which it believes could potentially affect its authority and prestige.
In history, the anti-rightist campaign[1] is a good example. Intellectuals, who wanted to give the party good suggestions, were sent to forced labor camps to reform themselves.
The current persecution of Falun Gong is another good example.
The regime cannot tolerate that more people believe in Falun Gong than in communism. In its mind, everyone is eager for power. The more people the more it is a threat to its power. The regime does not need a reason for doing anything. In other words, its needs justify the reason.
That is why it is impossible for the Chinese people to avoid being persecuted under the regime's rule. One will be persecuted sooner or later. One may escape persecution in this campaign by luck but will be caught in another campaign later.
The Real Damage
In fact, the biggest crime committed by the Chinese communist regime is not its killing of thousands of innocent people or creating thousands of corrupt cadres who are all over the country sucking people's blood like leeches.
The biggest crime is the destruction of traditional Chinese culture and the development of the party culture that it forcefully indoctrinated into every corner of Chinese society and every aspect of Chinese people's lives. It caused the moral degeneration in China and twisted people's minds about what is right and wrong, good and evil.
With the spread of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party and the impact of the Quit the CCP Campaign, I believe that the collapse of the regime is imminent. However, the damage has been done and the Chinese people will have an arduous road ahead to rebuild the nation's morality.
Notes:
[1] In 1957 the CCP launched the "anti-rightist" campaign. The Chinese Communist Party started by consulting the non-party member intellectuals about possible reforms. Then they were given long term labor camp sentences for their suggestions.
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