Commentary 7: On the Chinese Communist Party’s History of Killing

The CCP is responsible for the deaths of 60 million to 80 million Chinese people. This number exceeds the total number of casualties in both World Wars combined.

Epoch Times

The Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party were first published in November of 2004, followed quickly by an English translation. In 15 years, the series has led over 300 million Chinese to renounce the communist party and its affiliated organizations, fostering an unprecedented peaceful movement for transformation and change in China. People continue to renounce the party every day. Here we republish the newly re-edited Nine Commentaries, linked to video versions produced by our partner media NTD Television. For the other Commentaries, please see the Table of Contents.

Foreword

The 55-year history of the CCP is written with blood and lies. The stories behind this bloody history are both extremely tragic and rarely known. Under the rule of the CCP, 60 to 80 million innocent Chinese people have been killed, leaving their broken families behind. Many people wonder why the CCP kills.

While the CCP recently suppressed protesting crowds in Hanyuan with gunshots [in November 2004] and continues its brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, many people wonder whether they will ever see the day when the CCP will learn to speak with words rather than guns.

Mao Zedong summarized the purpose of the Cultural Revolution, “After the chaos the world reaches peace, but in seven or eight years, the chaos needs to happen again.”[1] In other words, there should be a political revolution every seven or eight years, and a crowd of people needs to be killed every seven or eight years.

A supporting ideology and practical requirements lie behind the CCP’s slaughters.

Ideologically, the CCP believes in the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and “continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Therefore, after the CCP took over China, it killed the landowners to resolve problems with production relationships in rural areas. It killed the capitalists to reach the goal of commercial and industrial reform and solve the production relationships in the cities. After these two classes were eliminated, the problems related to the economic base were basically solved.

Similarly, solving the problems related to the superstructure also called for slaughter. The suppressions of the Hu Feng Anti-Party Group and the Anti-Rightist Movement eliminated the intellectuals. Killing the Christians, Taoists, Buddhists, and popular folk groups solved the problem of religions.

Mass murders during the Cultural Revolution established, culturally and politically, the CCP’s absolute leadership. The Tiananmen Square massacre was used to prevent political crisis and squelch democratic demands. The persecution of Falun Gong is meant to resolve the issues of belief and traditional healing.

These actions were all necessary for the CCP to strengthen its power and maintain its rule in the face of continual financial crisis (prices for consumer goods skyrocketed after the CCP took power, and China’s economy almost collapsed after the Cultural Revolution), political crisis (some people not following the Party’s orders or some others wanting to share political rights with the Party), and crisis of belief (the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, political changes in Eastern Europe, and the Falun Gong issue).

Except for the Falun Gong issue, almost all the foregoing political movements were utilized to revive the evil specter of the CCP and incite its desire for revolution. The CCP also used these political movements to test CCP members, eliminating those who did not meet the Party’s requirements.

Recurring slaughters every seven or eight years serves to refresh people's memory of terror.

Killing is also necessary for practical reasons. The Communist Party began as a group of thugs and scoundrels who killed to obtain power. Once this precedent was set, there was no going back. Constant terror was needed to intimidate people and force them to accept, out of fear, the absolute rule of the CCP.

On the surface, it may appear that the CCP was “forced to kill” and that various incidents just happened to irritate the CCP evil specter and accidentally trigger the CCP’s killing mechanism. In truth, these incidents serve to disguise the Party’s need to kill, and periodical killing is required by the CCP.

Without these painful lessons, people might begin to think the CCP was improving and start to demand democracy, just as those idealistic students in the 1989 democratic movement did. Recurring slaughter every seven or eight years serves to refresh people’s memory of terror and can warn the younger generation: Whoever works against the CCP, wants to challenge the CCP’s absolute leadership, or attempts to tell the truth regarding China’s history, will get a taste of the “iron fist of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Killing has become one of the most essential ways for the CCP to maintain power. With the escalation of its bloody debts, laying down its butcher knife would encourage people to take vengeance for the CCP’s criminal acts.

Therefore, the CCP not only needed to conduct copious and thorough killing, but the slaughter also had to be done in a most brutal fashion to intimidate the populace effectively, especially early on, when the CCP was establishing its rule.

Since the purpose of the killing was to instill the greatest terror, the CCP selected targets for destruction arbitrarily and irrationally. In every political movement, the CCP used the strategy of genocide. Take the Suppression of the Counter-Revolutionary Movement as an example.

The CCP did not really suppress the reactionary behaviors, but the people whom they called the counter-revolutionaries. If one had been enlisted and served a few days in the KMT Army but did absolutely nothing political after the CCP gained power, this person would still be killed because of his “reactionary history.” In the process of land reform, in order to remove the “root of the problem,” the CCP often killed a landowner’s entire family.

Since 1949, the CCP has persecuted more than half the people in China. An estimated 60 million to 80 million people died from unnatural causes. This number exceeds the total number of deaths in both World Wars combined.

As with other communist countries, the wanton killing done by the CCP also includes brutal slayings of its own members in order to remove dissidents who value a sense of humanity over the Party nature. The CCP’s rule of terror falls equally on the populace and its members in an attempt to maintain an “invincible fortress.”

In a normal society, people show care and love for one another, hold life in awe and veneration, and give thanks to God. In the East, people say, “Do not impose on others what you would not want done to yourself.”[2] In the West, people say, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”[3]

Conversely, the CCP holds that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”[4] In order to keep alive the “struggles” within society, hatred must be generated. Not only does the CCP take lives, it encourages people to kill each other.

It strives to desensitize people toward others’ suffering by surrounding them with constant killing. It wants them to become numb from frequent exposure to inhumane brutality and develop the mentality that the best you can hope for is to avoid being persecuted. All these lessons taught by brutal suppression enable the CCP to maintain its rule.

In addition to the destruction of countless lives, the CCP also destroyed the soul of the Chinese people. A great many people have become conditioned to react to the CCP’s threats by entirely surrendering their reason and their principles. In a sense, these people’s souls have died—something more frightening than physical death.

I. Horrendous Massacre

Before the CCP was in power, Mao Zedong wrote, “We definitely do not apply a policy of benevolence to the counter-revolutionaries and towards the reactionary activities of the reactionary classes.”[5] In other words, even before the CCP took over Beijing, it had already made up its mind to act tyrannically under the euphemism of the People’s Democratic Dictatorship. The following are a few examples.

Suppression of the Counter-Revolutionaries and Land Reform

In March 1950, the CCP announced “Orders to Strictly Suppress Reactionary Elements,” which is historically known as the movement of Suppression of the Counter-Revolutionaries.

Unlike all the emperors who granted amnesty to the entire country after they were crowned, the CCP started killing the minute it gained power. Mao Zedong said in a document, “There are still many places where people are intimidated and dare not kill the counter-revolutionaries openly on a large scale.”[6]

In February 1951, the central CCP said that except for Zhejiang Province and southern Anhui Province, “other areas which are not killing enough, especially in the large and mid-sized cities, should continue to arrest and kill a large number and should not stop too soon.”

Mao even recommended, “In rural areas, to kill the counter-revolutionaries, there should be over one thousandth of the total population killed. … In the cities, it should be less than one thousandth.”[7] The population of China at that time was approximately 600 million, and this “royal order” from Mao would have caused at least 600,000 deaths.

Nobody knows where this ratio of one-thousandth came from. Perhaps, on a whim, Mao decided these 600,000 lives should be enough to lay the foundation for creating fear among the people, and thus ordered it to happen.

Whether those killed deserved to die was not the CCP’s concern. “The People’s Republic of China Regulations for Punishing the Counter-Revolutionaries” announced in 1951 that those who “spread rumors” can be “immediately executed.”

While the Suppression of Counter-Revolutionaries was being hotly implemented, land reform was also taking place on a large scale. In fact, the CCP had already started land reform within its occupied areas in the late 1920s.

On the surface, land reform appeared to advocate an ideal similar to that of the Heavenly Kingdom of Taiping[8]: All would have land to farm. It was really just an excuse to kill. Tao Zhu, who ranked 4th in the CCP afterwards, had a slogan for land reform: “Every village bleeds, every household fights,” indicating that in every village the landowners must die.

The most common way to kill during the land reform was known as the Struggle Meeting.

Land reform could have been achieved without killing. It could have been done in the same way as the Taiwanese government implemented its land reform by purchasing the property from the landowners. However, as the CCP originated from a group of thugs and lumpen proletariat, it only knew how to rob. Fearing it might suffer revenge after robbing, the CCP naturally needed to kill the victims, thus stamping out the source of potential trouble.

The most common way to kill during the land reform was known as the Struggle Meeting. The CCP fabricated crimes and charged the landowners or rich farmers. The public was asked how they should be punished. Some CCP members or activists were already planted in the crowd to shout, “We should kill them!” and the landowners and rich peasants were then executed on the spot.

At that time, whoever owned land in the villages was classified as a “bully.” Those who often took advantage of the peasants were called “mean bullies;” those who often helped with repairing public facilities and donated money to schools and for natural disaster relief were called “kind bullies;” and those who did nothing were called “still or silent bullies.” A classification like this was meaningless because all the “bullies” ended up being executed right away regardless of what “bully” category they belonged to.

By the end of 1952, the CCP-published number of executed “reactionary elements” was about 2.4 million. Actually, the total death toll of landowners and former KMT government officials below the county level was at least 5 million.

The Suppression of the Counter-Revolutionaries and land reform had three direct results. First, former local officials who had been selected through clan-based autonomy were eliminated. The CCP killed all the management personnel in the previous system and realized complete control of rural areas by installing a Party branch in each village.

Second, a huge amount of wealth was obtained by stealing and robbing. Third, civilians were terrorized by the brutal suppression against the landowners and rich farmers.

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[1] Mao Zedong’s letter to his wife Jiang Qing (1966).

[2] “The Analects of Confucius.”

[3] “Leviticus 19:18.”

[4] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “The Communist Manifesto” (1848).

[5] Mao Zedong, “The People’s Democratic Dictatorship” (1949).

[6] Mao Zedong, “We Must Fully Promote [the Suppression of Counter-Revolutionaries] So Every Family Is Informed” (1951).

[7] Mao Zedong, “We Must Forcefully and Accurately Strike the Counter-Revolutionaries” (1951).

[8] The Heavenly Kingdom of Taiping (1851–1864), also known as the Taiping Rebellion, was one of the bloodiest conflicts in Chinese history. It was a clash between the forces of Imperial China and those inspired by a self-proclaimed mystic of the Hakka cultural group named Hong Xiuquan, who was also a Christian convert. At least 30 million people are believed to have died.

The ‘Three Anti Campaign’ and ‘Five Anti Campaign’

The Suppression of Reactionaries and the land reform mainly targeted the countryside, while the subsequent Three Anti Campaign and Five Anti Campaign could be regarded as the corresponding genocide in the cities.

The Three Anti Campaign began in December 1951 and targeted corruption, waste, and bureaucracy among the CCP cadres. Some corrupt CCP officials were executed. Soon afterward, the CCP attributed the corruption of its government officials to temptation by capitalists. Accordingly, the Five Anti Campaign against bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, jerry-building, and espionage of state economic information was launched in January 1952.

The Five Anti Campaign was essentially stealing capitalists’ property or rather murdering the capitalists for their money. Chen Yi, the mayor of Shanghai at that time, was debriefed on his sofa with a cup of tea in hand every night. He would ask leisurely, “How many paratroopers are there today?” meaning, “How many businessmen jumped out of high buildings to commit suicide?”

None of the capitalists could escape the Five Anti Campaign. They were required to pay taxes that had been “evaded” as early as the Guangxu Period (1875–1908) in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) when the Shanghai commercial market was initially established. The capitalists could not possibly afford to pay such “taxes” even with all their fortunes.

They had no other choice but to end their lives, but they didn’t dare to jump into the Huangpu River. If their bodies could not be found, the CCP would accuse them of fleeing to Hong Kong, and their family members would still be held responsible for the taxes.

The capitalists instead jumped from tall buildings, leaving a corpse so that the CCP could see proof of their death. It was said that people didn’t dare to walk next to tall buildings in Shanghai at that time for fear of being crushed by people jumping from above.

According to “Facts of the Political Campaigns after the Founding of the People’s Republic of China,” co-edited in 1996 by four government units, including the CCP History Research Center, during the Three Anti Campaign and Five Anti Campaign, more than 323,100 people were arrested, and over 280 committed suicide or disappeared.

In the Anti-Hu Feng campaign in 1955, over 5,000 were incriminated, over 500 arrested, over 60 committed suicide, and 12 died from unnatural causes. In the subsequent Suppression of the Reactionaries, over 21,300 people were executed, and over 4,300 committed suicide or disappeared.[9]

The Great Famine

The highest death toll was recorded during China’s Great Famine shortly after the Great Leap Forward. The article “Great Famine” in the book “Historical Records of the People’s Republic of China” states, “The number of unnatural deaths and reduced births from 1959 to 1961 is estimated at about 40 million. … China’s depopulation by 40 million is likely to be the world’s greatest famine in this century.”[10]

The Great Famine was falsely labeled a “Three-Year Natural Disaster” by the CCP. In fact, those three years had favorable weather conditions without any massive natural disasters like flooding, drought, hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, frost, freeze, hail or plague of locusts. The disaster was entirely caused by man.

The Great Leap Forward campaign required everyone in China to become involved in steel-making, forcing farmers to leave their crops to rot in the field. Despite this, officials in every region escalated their claims of production yields. He Yiran, the first secretary of the Party Committee of Liuzhou Prefecture, on his own fabricated the shockingly high yield of “65,000 kilograms of paddy rice per ’mu'”[11] in Huanjiang County. This was right after the Lushan Plenum, when the CCP’s Anti-Rightist Movement spread out to the entire country.

In order to demonstrate that the CCP was correct all the time, the crops were expropriated by the government as a form of taxation according to these exaggerated yields. Consequently, the grain rations, seeds, and staple foods of the peasants were all confiscated. When the demand still could not be met, the peasants were accused of hiding their crops.

He Yiran once said that they must strive to get first place in the competition for highest yield no matter how many people in Liuzhou would die. Some peasants were deprived of everything, with only some handfuls of rice left hidden in the urine basin.

The Party Committee of Xunle District, Huanjiang County, even issued an order to forbid cooking, preventing the peasants from eating the crops. Patrols were conducted by militiamen at night. If they saw light from a fire, they would proceed with a search and raid. Many peasants did not even dare to cook edible wild herbs or bark, and died of starvation.

Historically, in times of famine, the government would provide rice porridge, distribute the crops, and allow victims to flee from the famine. The CCP, however, regarded fleeing from the famine as a disgrace to the Party’s prestige and ordered militiamen to block roadways to prevent victims from escaping the famine. When the peasants were so hungry as to snatch cereal from the grain depots, the CCP ordered shooting at the crowd to suppress the looting. It then labeled those killed as counter-revolutionary elements.

A great number of peasants were starved to death in many provinces, including Gansu, Shandong, Henan, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan, and Guangxi provinces. Still, the hungry peasants were forced to take part in irrigation work, dam construction, and steel-making. Many dropped to the ground while working and never got up again. In the end, those who survived had no strength to bury the dead. Many villages died out completely as families starved to death one after another.

Officials concealed the facts about the deaths from starvation in order to protect their positions.

In the most serious famines in China’s history prior to the CCP, there were cases in which families exchanged one another’s children to eat, but nobody ever ate his own children. Under the CCP’s reign, however, people were driven to eat those who died, cannibalize those who fled from other regions, and even kill and eat their own children.

The writer Sha Qing depicted this scene in his book “Yi Xi Da Di Wan” (“An Obscure Land of Bayou”)[12]: In a peasant’s family, a father was left with only his son and daughter during the Great Famine. One day, the father drove his daughter out of the house. When she came back, she could not find her younger brother but saw white oil floating in the cauldron and a pile of bones next to the stove.

Several days later, the father added more water to the pot and called his daughter to come closer. The girl was frightened and pleaded with her father from outside the door, “Daddy, please don’t eat me. I can collect firewood and cook food for you. If you eat me, nobody else will do this for you.”

The final extent and number of tragedies such as this are unknown. Yet the CCP misrepresented them as a noble honor, claimed that the CCP was leading people bravely to fight “natural disasters,” and continued to tout itself as “great, glorious, and correct.”

After the Lushan Plenum was held in 1959, General Peng Dehuai was stripped of his power because he spoke out for the people. A group of government officials and cadres who dared to speak the truth were dismissed from their posts, detained, or investigated. After that, no one dared to speak out the truth.

At the time of the Great Famine, instead of reporting the truth, officials concealed the facts about the deaths from starvation in order to protect their positions. Gansu Province even refused food aid from Shaanxi Province, claiming Gansu had too great a food surplus.

This Great Famine was also a qualifying test for the CCP’s cadres. According to the CCP’s criteria, the cadres who had resisted telling the truth in the face of tens of millions starving to death were certainly “qualified.” With this test, the CCP would then believe that nothing such as human emotions or heavenly principles could become a psychological burden that would prevent these cadres from following the Party line.

After the Great Famine, the responsible provincial officials merely participated in the formality of self-criticism. Li Jingquan, the CCP secretary for Sichuan Province, where millions of people died from starvation, was promoted to be the first secretary of the southwestern district bureau of the CCP.

The Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square Massacre, and Falun Gong

The Cultural Revolution was formally launched on May 16, 1966, and lasted until 1976. This period was called the “Ten-Year Catastrophe” even by the CCP itself. Later, in an interview with a Yugoslav reporter, Hu Yaobang, former general Party secretary, said, “At that time, nearly 100 million people were implicated, which was one-tenth of the Chinese population.”

“Facts of the Political Campaigns after the Founding of the People’s Republic of China” reported: “In May 1984, after 31 months of intensive investigation, verification, and recalculation by the Central Committee of the CCP, the figures related to the Cultural Revolution were: Over 4.2 million people were detained and investigated; over 1.73 million people died of unnatural causes; over 135,000 people were labeled as counter-revolutionaries and executed; over 237,000 people were killed; over 7.03 million were disabled in armed attacks; and 71,200 families were destroyed.”

Statistics compiled from county annals show that 7.73 million people died of unnatural causes during the Cultural Revolution.

In addition to beating people to death, the beginning of the Cultural Revolution also triggered a wave of suicides. Many famous intellectuals, including Lao She, Fu Lei, Jian Bozan, Wu Han, and Chu Anping all ended their own lives at an early stage of the Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution was the most frenzied leftist period in China. Killing became a competitive way to exhibit one’s revolutionary standing, so the slaughter of “class enemies” was extremely cruel and brutal.

After the Cultural Revolution ended, the policy of “reform and opening up” greatly advanced the circulation of information, which made it possible for many foreign reporters to witness the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and to air television reports showing tanks chase down and crush college students to death.

Ten years later, on July 20, 1999, Jiang Zemin began his suppression of Falun Gong. By the end of 2002, confidential information from government sources in Mainland China confirmed the cover-up of over 7,000 deaths in detention centers, forced labor camps, prisons, and mental hospitals, with an average of seven people being killed every day.

The CCP knows that open killing would result in a withdrawal of foreign capital.

Nowadays the CCP tends to kill far less than in the past when millions or tens of millions were murdered. There are two important reasons for this. On the one hand, the Party has warped the minds of the Chinese people with its Party culture so that they are now more submissive and cynical.

On the other hand, because of excessive corruption and embezzlement by CCP officials, the Chinese economy has become a “transfusion” type of economy, depending substantially on foreign capital to sustain economic growth and social stability. The CCP vividly remembers the economic sanctions that followed the Tiananmen Square massacre, and knows that open killing would result in a withdrawal of foreign capital that would endanger its totalitarian regime.

Nevertheless, the CCP has never given up slaughtering behind the scenes. But today’s CCP does this with a difference: it spares no effort to hide the bloody evidence.

II. Extremely Cruel Ways of Killing

Everything the CCP does serves only one purpose: gaining and maintaining power. Killing is a very important way for the CCP to maintain its power. The more people killed and the crueler the killings, the greater the ability to terrify. Such terror started as early as before the war against Japan.

Massacre in Northern China during the War against Japan

When recommending the book “Enemy Within” by Father Raymond J. de Jaegher and Irene Corbally Kuhn,[13] former U.S. President Hoover commented that the book exposed the naked terror of communist movements. He would recommend it to anyone who wanted to understand such an evil force in this world.

In this book, de Jaegher told stories about how the CCP used violence to terrify people into submission. For instance, one day the CCP required everyone to go to the square in the village. Teachers led the children to the square from school. The purpose for the gathering was to watch the killing of 13 patriotic young men. After announcing the fabricated charges against the victims, the CCP ordered the horrified teacher to lead the children to sing patriotic songs.

Appearing on the stage amid the songs were not dancers, but rather an executioner holding a sharp knife in his hands. The executioner was a fierce, robust young communist soldier with strong arms. The soldier went behind the first victim, quickly raised a big sharp knife and struck downwards, and the first head fell to the ground. Blood sprayed out like a fountain as the head rolled on the ground. The children’s hysterical singing turned into chaotic screaming and crying. The teacher kept the beat, trying to keep the songs going; her bell was heard ringing over and over in the chaos.

The executioner chopped 13 times and 13 heads fell to the ground. After that, many communist soldiers came over, cut the victims’ chests open and took out their hearts for a feast. All the brutality was done in front of the children. The children went completely pale in terror and some started throwing up. The teacher scolded the children, and lined them up to return to school.

After that, Father de Jaegher often saw children being forced to watch killings. The children became used to the bloody scenes and numb to the killing; some even started to enjoy the excitement.

When the CCP felt that simple killing was not horrifying and exciting enough, they invented all kinds of cruel torture. For example, forcing someone to swallow a large amount of salt without letting him drink any water—the victim would suffer until he died of thirst; stripping someone naked and forcing him to roll on broken glass; creating a hole in a frozen river in the winter, then throwing the victim into the hole—the victim would either freeze to death or drown.

Father de Jaegher wrote that a CCP member in Shanxi Province invented a terrible torture. One day when he was wandering in the city, he stopped in front of a restaurant and stared at a big boiling vat. Later he purchased several giant vats and immediately arrested some people who were against the Communist Party.

During the hasty trial, the vats were filled with water and heated to boiling. Three victims were stripped naked and thrown into the vats to boil to death after the trial.

At Pingshan, de Jaegher witnessed a father being skinned alive. The CCP members forced the son to watch and participate in the inhumane torture, to see his father die in excruciating pain and listen to his father’s screams.

The CCP members poured vinegar and acid onto the father’s body and then quickly peeled off all his skin. They started from the back, then up to the shoulders, and soon the skin from his whole body was peeled off, leaving only the skin on the head intact. His father died in minutes.

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[9] Excerpt from the book published by the Hong Kong-based Chengming magazine (October issue, 1996).

[10] “Historical Records of the People’s Republic of China” (Red Flag Publishing House, 1994).

[11] Unit of Chinese land measurement: 1 mu = 0.165 acres.

[12] Sha Qing, “Yi Xi Da Di Wan” (“An Obscure Land of Bayou”), 1988.

[13] Raymond J. de Jaegher and Irene Corbally Kuhn, “Enemy Within.” (Guild Books, Catholic Polls, Incorporated, 1968).

Red Terror During ‘Red August’

After gaining absolute control over the country, the CCP did not end its violence. During the Cultural Revolution, such violence became worse.

On Aug. 18, 1966, Mao Zedong met with the Red Guard representatives on the tower of Tiananmen Square. Song Binbin, daughter of Communist leader Song Renqiong, put a Red Guard sleeve emblem on Mao.

When Mao learned of Song Binbin’s name, which means gentle and polite, he said, “We need more violence.” Song therefore changed her name to Song Yaowu (literally meaning “want violence”).

Violent armed attacks soon spread quickly to the whole country. The younger generation, educated in communist atheism, had no fears or concerns. Under the direct leadership of the CCP and guided by Mao’s instructions, the Red Guards, being fanatic and ignorant and holding themselves above the law, started beating people and ransacking homes nationwide.

In many areas, all of the “five black classes” (landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements, and rightists) and their family members were eradicated according to a policy of genocide.

A typical example was Daxing County near Beijing, where from Aug. 27 to Sept. 1, 1966, a total of 325 people were killed in 48 brigades of 13 People’s Communes. The oldest killed was 80 years old and the youngest only 38 days old. Twenty-two entire households were killed with no one left.

“Beating a person to death was a common scene. On Shatan Street, a group of male Red Guards tortured an old woman with metal chains and leather belts until she could not move any more, and still a female Red Guard jumped on her body and stomped on her stomach. The old woman died on the scene. …

“Near Chongwenmeng, when the Red Guards searched the home of a landlord’s wife (a lonely widow), they forced each neighbor to bring a pot of boiling water to the scene and they poured the boiling water down the old lady’s collar until her body was cooked.

Several days later, the old lady was found dead in the room, her body covered with maggots. …

“There were many different ways of killing, including beating to death with batons, cutting with sickles, and strangling to death with ropes. … The way to kill babies was the most brutal: The killer stepped on one leg of a baby and pulled the other leg, tearing the baby in half.”[14]

The Guangxi cannibalism was even more inhumane than the Daxing massacre. Writer Zheng Yi, author of the book “Scarlet Memorial,” described the cannibalism as progressing in three stages.[15]

In the beginning stage, the terror was covert and gloomy. County annals documented a typical scene: At midnight, the killers tip-toed to find their victim and cut him open to remove his heart and liver. Because they were inexperienced and scared, they took his lung by mistake; then they had to go back. Once they had cooked the heart and liver, some people brought liquor from home, some brought seasoning, and then all the killers ate the human organs in silence by the light of the oven fire.

In the second stage, the terror became open and public. During this stage, veteran killers had gained experience in how to remove hearts and livers while the victim was still alive, and they taught others, refining their techniques to perfection.

For example, when cutting open a living person, the killers only needed to cut a cross on the victim’s belly, step on his body (if the victim was tied to a tree, the killers would bump his lower abdomen with the knee) and the heart and other organs would just fall out. The head killer was entitled to the heart, liver, and genitals while others would take what was left. These grand yet dreadful scenes were adorned with flying flags and slogans.

The third stage was crazed. Cannibalism became a massive, widespread movement. In Wuxuan County, like wild dogs eating corpses during an epidemic, people were madly eating other people. Often victims were first “publicly criticized,” which was always followed by killing and then cannibalism.

Without the CCP's encouragement and manipulation, the cannibalism movement could not have happened at all.

As soon as a victim fell to the ground, dead or alive, people took out the knives they had prepared and surrounded the victim, cutting any body part they could get hold of. At this stage, ordinary citizens were all involved in the cannibalism. The hurricane of “class struggle” blew away any sense of sin and human nature from people’s minds. Cannibalism spread like an epidemic, and people enjoyed cannibalistic feasts.

Any part of the human body was edible, including the heart, meat, liver, kidneys, elbows, feet, and tendons. Human bodies were cooked in many different ways, including boiling, steaming, stir-frying, baking, frying, and barbecuing. People drank liquor or wine and played games while eating human bodies. During the peak of this movement, even the cafeteria of the highest government organization, the Wuxuan County revolutionary committee, offered human dishes.

Readers should not mistakenly think such a festival of cannibalism was purely an unorganized behavior by the people. The CCP was a totalitarian organization controlling every single cell of society. Without the CCP’s encouragement and manipulation, the cannibalism movement could not have happened at all.

A song written by the CCP in praise of itself says, “The old society[16] turned humans into ghosts, the new society turned ghosts into humans.” However, these killings and cannibalistic feasts tell us that the CCP could turn a human being into a monster or a devil because the CCP itself is crueler than any monster or devil.

Persecution of Falun Gong

As the people in China step into the era of computers and space travel and can talk privately about human rights, freedom, and democracy, many people think that the gruesome and disgusting atrocities are all in the past. The CCP has donned civilian clothing and is ready to connect with the world.

But that is far from the truth. When the CCP discovered that there is a group that does not fear its cruel torture and killing, it became even more manic. The group that has been persecuted in this way is Falun Gong.

The Red Guards’ violence and the cannibalism in Guangxi Province aimed at eliminating the victim’s body, killing someone in several minutes or several hours.

However, Falun Gong practitioners are persecuted to force them to give up their belief in truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The cruel torture often lasts for several days, several months, or even several years. It is estimated that more than 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners have died as a result of torture as of December 2004, but the persecution has continued to the present.

Falun Gong practitioners who suffered all kinds of tortures and escaped from the jaws of death have documented more than 100 cruel torture methods; the following are only a few examples.

Beating is the most common torture method used on Falun Gong practitioners. The police and head prisoners beat practitioners themselves, and also instigate other prisoners to beat practitioners. Some practitioners have become deaf from these beatings, their outer ear tissues have been broken off, their eyeballs crushed, their teeth broken, and their skull, spine, ribcage, collarbone, pelvis, arms and legs have been broken; their arms and legs have been amputated due to the beatings. Some torturers have ruthlessly pinched and crushed male practitioners’ testicles and kicked female practitioners’ genital areas. If the practitioners did not give in, torturers would continue beating them until the their skin broke open, their flesh exposed. Some practitioners’ bodies became completely deformed due to torture, and were covered in blood, yet guards still poured salt water on them and continued to shock them with electric batons. The smell of blood and of burning flesh blended together; the practitioners’ screams of agony were unbearable. The torturers also put plastic bags over practitioners’ heads, sealing them tight, attempting to make them yield out of fear of suffocation.

Electric shock is another method commonly used in Chinese forced labor camps to torture Falun Gong practitioners. The police have used electric batons to shock sensitive parts of  practitioners’ bodies, including the mouth, top of the head, chest, genitalia, hips, thighs, soles of the feet, female practitioners’ breasts, and male practitioners’ penis. Some police have shocked practitioners with several electric batons simultaneously until burning flesh could be smelled and the resulting injuries were swelling, dark and purple. Sometimes, the a practitioner’s head and anus are shocked at the same time. Multiple police have often used ten or more electric batons simultaneously to beat the practitioners for a protracted period of time. Normally an electric baton delivers tens of thousands of volts. When it discharges, it emits blue light accompanied by a crackling  sound reminiscent of the discharge of static electricity. When the electric current goes through a person’s body, it feels as if one is being burned or being bitten by snakes. Every shock is very painful, like a snakebite. The victim’s skin turns red, cracks, and burns, and the wounds fester. There are even more powerful electric batons with higher voltage that make the victim feel as if his head is being hit with a hammer.

Police also use lit cigarettes to burn practitioners’ hands, face, bottoms of the feet, chest, back, nipples, and so on. They use cigarette lighters to burn practitioners’ hands and genitals. Specially-made iron bars are heated in electrical stoves until they become red-hot. They are then used to burn practitioners’ legs. The police also use red-hot charcoal to burn practitioners’ faces. The police burned a practitioner to death who, after having already endured cruel tortures, still had a breath and a pulse. The police then claimed his death was a “self-immolation.”

Sexual torture has been common. Police beat female practitioners’ breasts and genital areas. They have raped and gang-raped women practitioners. In addition, police have stripped female practitioners and thrown them into prison cells filled with male prisoners, who have then raped them. They have used electric batons to shock their breasts and genitals. They have used cigarette lighters to burn their nipples, and inserted electrical batons into the practitioners’ vaginas to shock them. They have bundled four toothbrushes and inserted them into female practitioners’ vaginas and rubbed and twisted the toothbrushes. They have hooked female practitioners’ private parts with iron hooks. Female practitioners’ hands are cuffed behind their backs, and practitioners’ nipples are hooked up to wires through which electric current is run.

The torturers force Falun Gong practitioners to wear “straight jackets [20],” and then cross and tie their arms behind their backs. They pull the practitioners’ arms up over their shoulders to the front of their chest, tie up the practitioners’ legs and hang the practitioners up outside windows. At the same time, they gag practitioners’ mouths with cloth, put earphones in their ears and continuously play messages that slander Falun Gong. According to an eyewitness account, people who suffer this torture quickly sustain broken arms, tendons, shoulders, wrists and elbows. Those who have been tortured this way for a long time have had completely broken spines, and died in agonizing pain.

The torturers also throw practitioners into dungeons filled with sewage. They hammer bamboo sticks under the practitioners’ fingernails and force them to live in damp rooms full of red, green, yellow, white and other molds on the ceiling, floors and walls, which cause their injuries to fester. They also have dogs, snakes and scorpions bite the practitioners and they inject the practitioners with nerve-damaging drugs. These are just some of the ways that practitioners are tortured in the labor camps.

III. Cruel Struggle Within the Party

Because the CCP unifies its members on the basis of Party nature rather than morality and justice, a central question is the loyalty of its members, especially of senior officials, to the supreme leader. The Party needs to create an atmosphere of terror by killing its members. The survivors then see that when the supreme dictator wants someone to die, that person will die miserably.

The internal fights of communist parties are well known. All members of the politburo of the Russian Communist Party in the first two terms, except Lenin, who had died, and Stalin himself, were executed or committed suicide. Three of the five marshals were executed, three of the five commanders-in-chief were executed, all ten secondary army commanders-in-chief were executed, 57 of the 85 army corps commanders were executed, and 110 of the 195 division commanders were executed.

By the time of the Cultural Revolution, almost all of the senior members within the Party had been eliminated.

The CCP always advocates “brutal struggles and merciless attacks.” Such tactics not only target people outside the Party. As early as the revolutionary period in Jiangxi Province, the CCP had already killed so many people in the Anti-Bolshevik Corps (AB Corps) that only a few survived to fight the ensuing wars.

In the city of Yan'an, the Party carried out a Rectification campaign. Later, after becoming politically established, it eliminated Gao Gang, Rao Shushi, Hu Feng, and Peng Dehuai. By the time of the Cultural Revolution, almost all of the senior members within the Party had been eliminated. None of the former CCP’s secretary-generals met with a good ending.

Liu Shaoqi,[17] a former Chinese president who was once the No. 2 figure in the nation, died miserably. On the day of his 70th birthday, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai specifically told Wang Dongxing (Mao’s lead guard) to bring Liu Shaoqi a birthday present, a radio, in order to let him hear the official report of the Eighth Plenary Session of the twelfth central committee, which said, “Forever expel the traitor, spy, and renegade Liu Shaoqi from the Party and continue to expose and criticize Liu Shaoqi and his accomplices’ crimes of betrayal and treason.”

Liu Shaoqi was crushed mentally, and his illnesses rapidly worsened. Because he was tied to the bed for a long time and could not move, his neck, back, hip, and heels had painful festering bedsores. When he felt great pain, he would grab some clothes, articles, or other people’s arms, and not let go, so people simply put a hard plastic bottle into each of his hands. When he died, the two hard plastic bottles had become hourglass-shaped from his gripping.

By October 1969, Liu Shaoqi’s body had started to rot all over, and the infected pus had a strong odor. He was as thin as a rail and on the verge of death, but the special inspector from the central Party committee did not allow him to take a shower or turn over his body to change his clothes. Instead, they stripped off all his clothes, wrapped him in a quilt, sent him by air from Beijing to Kaifeng City, and locked him up in the basement of a solid blockhouse.

When he had a high fever, they not only did not give him medication, but also transferred the medical personnel away. When Liu Shaoqi died, his body had completely degenerated, and his disheveled white hair was 2 feet long.

Two days later, at midnight, he was cremated as a person with a highly infectious disease. His bedding, pillow, and other things left behind were all cremated.

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[14] Yu Luowen, “Investigation of Daxing Massacre.” The Daxing Massacre occurred in August 1966 during the change of the Party secretary of Beijing. At that time, a speech was made by the minister of Public Security, Xie Fuzhi, in a meeting with the public security bureau of Beijing regarding no intervention with the Red Guards’ actions against the “black five classes.” Such a speech was soon relayed to a standing committee meeting of the Daxing public security bureau. After the meeting, the Daxing Public Security Bureau immediately took action and formed a plan to incite the masses in Daxin County to kill the “five black classes.”

[15] Zheng Yi, “Scarlet Memorial” (Taipei: Chinese Television Publishing House, 1993). This book is also available in English: Yi Zheng, “Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China,” translated and edited by T. P. Sym (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1998).

[16] The “old society,” as the CCP calls it, refers to the period prior to 1949, and the “new society” refers to the period after 1949, when the CCP took control over the country.

[17] Liu Shaoqi, chairman of the PRC between 1959 and 1968, was considered to be the successor to Mao Zedong. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), he was persecuted as a traitor, spy, and renegade by the CCP itself. He died in 1969 after being severely abused under the CCP’s imprisonment.

IV. Exporting the Revolution, Killing People Overseas

In addition to killing people with great delight and using a variety of methods within China and inside the Party, the CCP also participated in killing people abroad, including Chinese in other countries, by exporting the “revolution.” The Khmer Rouge is a typical example.

Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge only existed for four years in Cambodia. Nevertheless, from 1975 to 1978, more than 2 million people, including over 200,000 Chinese, were killed in this small country that had a population of only 8 million people.

Pol Pot worshipped Mao Zedong and visited China four times to listen to Mao Zedong's teachings in person.

The Khmer Rouge’s crimes are countless, but we will not discuss them here. We must, however, talk about its relationship with the CCP.

Pol Pot worshipped Mao Zedong. Beginning in 1965, he visited China four times to listen to Mao Zedong’s teachings in person. As early as November 1965, Pol Pot stayed in China for three months.

Chen Boda and Zhang Chunqiao[18] discussed with him theories such as “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” “class struggle,” “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and so on. Later, these became the basis for how he ruled Cambodia.

After returning to Cambodia, Pol Pot changed the name of his party to the Cambodian Communist Party and established revolutionary bases according to the CCP’s model of encircling cities from the countryside.

In 1968, the Cambodian Communist Party officially established an army. At the end of 1969, it had slightly more than 3,000 people. But in 1975, before attacking and occupying the city of Phnom Penh, it had become a well-equipped and brave fighting force of 80,000 soldiers. This was completely due to the CCP’s support.

The book “Documentary of Supporting Vietnam and Fighting with America,” by Wang Xiangen[19] says that in 1970 China gave Pol Pot armed equipment for 30,000 soldiers. In April 1975, Pol Pot took the capital of Cambodia, and two months later he went to Beijing to pay a visit to the CCP and listen to instructions. Obviously, if the Khmer Rouge’s killing had not been backed by the CCP’s theories and material support, it could not have been done.

For example, after Prince Sihanouk’s two sons were killed by the Cambodian Communist Party, the Cambodian Communist Party obediently sent Sihanouk to Beijing on Zhou Enlai’s orders. It was well known that when the Cambodian Communist Party killed people, they would “even kill the fetus” to prevent any possible trouble in the future. However, upon Zhou Enlai’s request, Pol Pot obeyed without protest.

Zhou Enlai could save Sihanouk with one word, but the CCP did not object to the more than 200,000 Chinese who were killed by the Cambodian Communist Party. At the time, the Chinese Cambodians went to the Chinese Embassy for help, but the embassy ignored them.

In May 1998, when a large-scale killing and raping of ethnic Chinese took place in Indonesia, the CCP did not say a word. It did not offer any help and even prevented the news from being spread inside China. It seems that the Chinese government does not care about the fate of overseas Chinese; it did not even offer any humanitarian assistance.

V. The Destruction of the Family

We have no way to count how many people have been killed in the CCP’s political campaigns. Among the people, there is no way to do a statistical survey because of information blocks and barriers among different regions, ethnic groups, and local dialects.

The CCP government would never conduct this kind of survey, as that would be the same as digging its own grave. The CCP prefers to omit the details when writing its own history.

The number of families damaged by the CCP is even more difficult to know. In some cases, one person died and the family was broken. In other cases, the entire family died. Even when no one died, many were forced to divorce. Fathers and sons and mothers and daughters were forced to renounce their relationships. Some were disabled, some went crazy, and some died young because of serious illness caused by torture. The record of all these family tragedies is very incomplete.

The Japan-based Yomiuri News once reported that over half of the Chinese population has been persecuted by the CCP. If that is the case, the number of families destroyed by the CCP is estimated to be over 100 million.

Zhang Zhixin has become a household name, as her story has been widely reported. Many people know that she suffered physical torture, gang rape, and mental torture. Finally, she was driven insane and shot to death after a hole was cut in her trachea. (With a hole cut in her trachea Zhang was unable to speak. When she was executed, she would appear to those present to have silently accepted her fate.) But many people may not know that there is another cruel story behind this tragedy—even her family members had to attend a “study session for the families of death row inmates.”

Zhang Zhixin’s daughter Lin Lin recalled that in the early spring of 1975: “A person from Shenyang Court said loudly, ‘Your mother is a real die-hard counter-revolutionary. She refuses to accept reform and is incorrigibly obstinate. She is against our great leader Chairman Mao, against the invincible Mao Zedong thought, and against Chairman Mao’s proletariat revolutionary direction. With one crime on top of another, our government is considering increasing the punishment. If she is executed, what is your attitude?’

“I was astonished, and did not know how to answer. My heart was broken. But I pretended to be calm, trying hard to keep my tears from falling. My father had told me that we could not cry in front of others, otherwise we had no way to renounce our relationship with my mother. Father answered for me, ‘If this is the case, the government is free to do what it deems necessary.’

“The person from court asked again, ‘Will you collect her body if she is executed? Will you collect her belongings in prison?’ I lowered my head and said nothing. Father answered for me again, ‘We don’t need anything.’… Father held my brother and me by the hands and we walked out of the county motel.

“Staggering along, we walked home against the howling snow storm. We did not cook; father split the only coarse corn bun we had at home and gave it to my brother and me. He said, ‘Finish it and go to bed early.’ I lay on the clay bed quietly. Father sat on a stool and stared at the light in a daze. After a while, he looked at the bed and thought we were all asleep. He stood up, gently opened the suitcase we brought from our old home in Shenyang, and took out mother’s photo. He looked at it and could not hold back his tears.

“I got up from bed, put my head into father’s arms and started crying loudly. Father patted me and said, ‘Don’t do that; we cannot let the neighbors hear it.’ My brother woke up after hearing me cry. Father held my brother and me tightly in his arms. This night we did not know how many tears we shed, but we could not cry freely.”[20]

One university lecturer had a happy family, but his family encountered a disaster during the process of redressing the rightists. At the time of the Anti-Rightist Movement, the woman who would become the university lecturer’s wife was dating someone who was labeled a rightist.

Her lover was later sent to a remote area and suffered greatly. Because she, as a young girl, could not go along, she gave her lover up and married the lecturer instead.

When her beloved one finally came back to their hometown, she, now a mother of several children, had no other way to repent her betrayal in the past.

She insisted on divorcing her husband in order to redeem her guilty conscience. By this time, the lecturer was over 50 years old. He could not accept the sudden change and went insane. He stripped off all his clothes and ran all over to look for a place to start a new life. Finally, his wife left him and their children.

Family is the traditional culture's last defense against Party culture.

A painful separation decreed by the Party is a problem that can’t be solved and an incurable social disease that can only replace one separation with another separation.

Family is the basic unit of the Chinese society. It is also the traditional culture’s last defense against Party culture. For this reason, the cruelest element in the CCP’s history of killing is the damage to the family.

Because the CCP monopolizes all social resources, when people are classified as being on the opposing side of the dictatorship, they will immediately face a crisis in livelihood, be accused by everyone in society, and stripped of their dignity.

Because they are treated unjustly, the family is the only safe haven for these innocent people to be consoled. But the CCP’s policy of implication keeps family members from comforting each other; otherwise, they too risked being labeled opponents of the dictatorship. Zhang Zhixin, for instance, was forced to divorce.

For many people, family members’ betrayal—reporting on, fighting, publicly criticizing, or denouncing them—is the last straw that breaks their spirit. Many people have committed suicide as a result.

VI. The Patterns and Consequences of Killing

The CCP’s Ideology of Killing

The CCP has always touted itself as being talented and creative in its development of Marxism-Leninism, but in reality, the CCP creatively developed an evil the likes of which had never been witnessed in any time or place.

It uses the communist ideology of social unity to deceive the public and intellectuals. It seizes the opportunity of science and technology’s undermining belief to promote complete atheism. It uses communism to deny private ownership and uses Lenin’s theory and practice of violent revolution to rule the country.

At the same time, it combined and further reinforced the most evil part of Chinese culture that deviates from mainstream Chinese traditions.

The CCP invented a complete theory and framework of “revolution” and “continuous revolution” under the dictatorship of the proletariat. It used this system to change society and ensure the Party dictatorship.

Its theory has two parts—economic base and superstructure under the dictatorship of the proletariat, in which the economic base determines the superstructure, while the superstructure in turn acts on the economic base.

In order to strengthen the superstructure, especially the Party’s power, it must first start the revolution from the economic base, which includes (1) killing the landowners to solve the relations of production in the countryside and (2) killing the capitalists to solve relations of production in cities.

Within the superstructure, killing is also repeatedly carried out to maintain the Party’s absolute control in ideology. This includes:

1. Solving the problem of intellectuals’ political attitude towards the Party. Over a long period of time, the CCP has launched multiple campaigns to reform the thought of the intellectuals. They have accused intellectuals of bourgeois individualism, bourgeois ideology, apolitical viewpoints, classless ideology, liberalism, and the like.

The CCP stripped intellectuals of their dignity through brainwashing them and eliminating their conscience. The CCP nearly eliminated completely the independent thinking and many other good qualities of the intellectuals, including the tradition of speaking out for justice and devoting one’s life to uphold justice.

That tradition teaches that the intellectual should “not be led into excesses when wealthy and honored or deflected from his purpose when poor and obscure, nor can he be made to bow before superior force.”[23]

“One should be the first to worry for the state and the last to claim his share of happiness.”[24]

“Every ordinary man shall hold himself responsible for his nation’s success and failure.”[25]

“In obscurity a gentleman makes perfect his own person, but in prominence he makes perfect the whole country as well.”[26]

2. Launching a cultural revolution and killing people in order to gain the CCP’s absolute cultural and political leadership. The CCP mobilized mass campaigns inside and outside the Party, starting to kill in the areas of literature, art, theater, history, and education. The CCP targeted the first attacks on several famous people such as the “Three-Family Village,”[27] Liu Shaoqi, Wu Han, Lao She, and Jian Bozan.[28]

Later, the number of people killed increased to “a small group inside the Party,” then “a small group inside the army,” and finally, the killing escalated from among all inside the Party and army to all the people around the country.

Armed fighting eliminated physical bodies; cultural attacks killed people’s spirit. It was an extremely chaotic and violent period under the CCP’s control. The evil side of human nature had been amplified to the maximum by the Party’s need to revive its power in a crisis. Everyone could arbitrarily kill under the name of “revolution” and “defending Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line.”

It was an unprecedented nationwide exercise of eliminating human nature.

During the Tiananmen Square massacre, the CCP even staged scenes of people burning military vehicles and killing soldiers, stage-managing the tragedy of the People's Army massacring its people.

Killing is also repeatedly carried out to maintain the Party’s absolute control in ideology. This includes the following:

3. Tiananmen Square massacre. The CCP fired at students in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, in response to the democratic demands following the Cultural Revolution.

This was the first time that the CCP army killed civilians publicly in order to suppress the people’s protest of embezzlement, corruption, and collusion between government officials and businessmen, and their demand for the freedoms of press, speech, and assembly.

During the Tiananmen Square massacre, in order to instigate hatred between the army and civilians, the CCP even staged scenes of people burning military vehicles and killing soldiers, stage-managing the tragedy of the People’s Army massacring its people.

4. Killing people of different beliefs. The domain of belief is the lifeline of the CCP. In order to let its heresy deceive people at the time, the CCP started to eliminate all religions and belief systems at the beginning of its rule. When facing a spiritual belief in a new era—Falun Gong—the CCP took out its butcher’s knife again.

The CCP’s strategy is to take advantage of Falun Gong’s principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance and the fact that practitioners do not lie, do not use violence, and will not cause social instability. After gaining experience in persecuting Falun Gong, the CCP made itself better able to eliminate people of other faiths.

This time, Jiang Zemin and the CCP themselves came to the front of the stage to kill instead of utilizing other people or groups.

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[18] Chen Boda (1904–1989) served as Mao Zedong’s political secretary and editor-in-chief of the CCP journal “Hongqi” (“Red Flag”). He was a leader of the Cultural Revolution Group and wrote the People’s Daily editorial “Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons” in 1966, which marked the beginning of one of the biggest purges during Cultural Revolution. Zhang Chunqiao (1917–) served as second deputy premier in 1975. He was a member of the Gang of Four, a group of leaders during the Cultural Revolution. His most widely known article is “On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship over the Bourgeoisie.”

[19] Wang Xiangen, “Documentary of Supporting Vietnam and Fighting with America.” (Beijing: International Cultural Publishing Company, 1990).

[20] Laogai Research Foundation (Oct. 12, 2004), “Report: Children among victims of Falun Gong persecution.”

[21] One of the three tools (means of production, modes of production, and relations of production) that Marx used to analyze social class. “Relations of production” refers to the relationship between the people who own productive tools and those who do not, for example, the relationship between landlord and tiller or the relationship between capitalist and worker.

[22] One of the three tools (means of production, modes of production, and relations of production) that Marx used to analyze social class. Relations of production refers to the relationship between the people who own productive tools and those who do not, for example, the relationship between landlord and tiller or the relationship between capitalist and worker.

[23] “Mencius, Book 3.” Penguin Classics series, translated by D.C. Lau.

[24] By Fan Zhongyan (989–1052), prominent Chinese educator, writer and government official from the Northern Song Dynasty. This quote was from his well-known prose essay, “Climbing the Yueyang Tower.”

[25] By Gu Yanwu (1613–1682), an eminent scholar of the early Qing Dynasty.

[26] “Mencius, Book 7.” Penguin Classics series, translated by D.C. Lau.

[27] Three-Family Village was the pen name of three writers in the 1960s, Deng Kuo, Wu Han, and Liao Mosha. Wu was the author of the play “Hai Rui Resigning from His Post,” which Mao considered a political satire about his relationship with General Peng Dehuai.

[28] Lao She (1899–1966) was a Chinese writer known for depicting the life of the Chinese during the war years. Many of his books have been turned into TV shows and movies. He was cruelly treated during the Cultural Revolution and drowned himself in a lake in 1966. Jian Bozan (1898–1968) was vice president of Peking University and a history professor. Mao had specially instructed that he be used as a negative example of a counter-revolutionary intellectual. He and his wife committed suicide together by taking an overdose of sleeping pills in December 1968.

5. Killing people in order to cover up the truth. The people’s right to know is another weak point of the CCP. The CCP also kills people in order to block information. In the past, “listening to the enemy’s radio broadcast” was a felony that was punished with prison terms.

Now, in response to multiple incidents of the interception of the state-owned television system to reveal the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong, Jiang Zemin issued the secret order to “kill instantly without mercy.”[29]

Liu Chengjun, who carried out such an interception, was tortured to death. The CCP has mobilized the 610 Office (an organization that was created to persecute Falun Gong and is similar to the Gestapo in Nazi Germany), the police, prosecutors, courts, and a massive Internet police system to monitor people’s every action.

6. Depriving people of their rights for the sake of CCP interests. The CCP’s theory of continuous revolution means, in reality, that it will not give up its power. Currently, embezzlement and corruption inside the CCP have developed into conflicts between the Party’s absolute leadership and people’s right to life.

When people organize to protect their rights legally, the CCP uses violence, waving its butcher’s knife toward the so-called “ringleaders” of these movements. The CCP has already prepared over one million armed police for this purpose.

Today, the CCP is much better prepared for killing than it was at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, when it had to mobilize temporarily its field army. However, while forcing its people on a road to ruin, the CCP has also forced itself into a dead end. The CCP has come to such an extremely vulnerable stage that it even “takes trees and grass as enemies when the wind blows,” as the Chinese saying goes.

We can see from the above that the CCP is by nature an evil specter. No matter how it changes at a specific time and place in order to maintain absolute control, the CCP will not change its history of killing: It killed people before, is killing people now, and will continue to kill in the future.

Different Killing Patterns Under Different Circumstances

1. Leading with Propaganda. The CCP has used various ways to kill people, depending on the period of time. In most situations, the CCP created propaganda before killing. The CCP has often said, “Only killing could appease the public’s indignation,” as if the people had requested the CCP to kill. In reality, this “public indignation” has been incited by the CCP.

For example, the drama “The White-Haired Girl,” a total distortion of a folk legend, and the fabricated stories of rent collection and water dungeons told in the drama “Liu Wencai” were both used as tools to “educate” people to hate landlords.

The CCP commonly demonizes its enemies, as it did in the case of China’s former President Liu Shaoqi. In particular, the CCP staged a self-immolation incident on Tiananmen Square in January 2001 to incite people’s hatred toward Falun Gong and then redoubled its massive genocidal campaign against Falun Gong.

Only when individuals die in humiliation and shame can the CCP achieve its purpose of "educating" the people who admired the victim.

Not only has the CCP not changed its ways of killing people, but instead has perfected them by employing new information technology. In the past, the CCP could only deceive the Chinese people, but now it also deceives people all over the world.

2. Mobilizing the Masses to Kill People. The CCP not only kills people through the machine of its dictatorship, but also actively mobilizes people to kill each other. Even if the CCP observed some regulations and laws in the beginning of these mobilizations, by the time it has incited people to join in, nothing could stop the slaughter. For example, when the CCP was carrying out its land reform, a land-reform committee could decide on the life and death of landlords.

3. Destroying One’s Spirit Before Killing the Physical Body. Another pattern of killing is to crush one’s spirit before killing the human body. In China’s history, even the most cruel and ferocious Qin Dynasty (221–207 B.C.) did not destroy people’s spirits. The CCP has never given people the chance to die a martyr.

They promulgated policies such as, “Leniency to those who confess and severe punishment to those who resist” and “Lowering one’s head to admit the crime is the only way out.”

The CCP forces people to give up their own thoughts and beliefs, making them die like dogs without dignity. A dignified death would encourage followers. Only when individuals die in humiliation and shame can the CCP achieve its purpose of “educating” the people who admired the victim.

The reason that the CCP persecutes Falun Gong with extreme cruelty and violence is that Falun Gong practitioners consider their beliefs more important than their lives. When the CCP was unable to destroy their dignity, it did everything it could to torture their physical bodies.

4. Killing People by Alliances and Alienation. When killing people, the CCP uses both the carrot and the stick, befriending some people and alienating others. The CCP has always tried to attack a small portion of the population, using the proportion of 5 percent. The majority of the population are always good, always the objects of “education.”

Such education consists of terror and care. Education through terror uses fear to show people that those who oppose the CCP will come to no good end, making them stay far away from those previously attacked by the Party.

Education through “care” lets people see that if they can earn the CCP’s trust and stand together with the CCP, they will not only be safe but also have a good chance to be promoted or gain other benefits.

Lin Biao once said, “A small portion [suppressed] today and a small portion tomorrow, soon there will be a large portion in total.” Those who rejoiced surviving one movement often became victims of the next.

Famous people with international influence are usually suppressed, but not killed by the CCP.

The CCP has used various ways to kill people, depending on the period of time. A list of such ways continues with the following:

5. Nipping Potential Threats in the Bud and Secretive Extra-Judicial Killings. Recently the CCP has developed the killing pattern of nipping problems in the bud and killing secretly outside the law. For example, as workers’ strikes or peasants’ protests become more common in various places, the CCP eliminates the movements before they can grow by arresting the so-called “ringleaders” and sentencing them to severe punishment.

In another example, as freedom and human rights have ever more become a commonly recognized trend throughout the world, the CCP did not sentence any Falun Gong practitioner to the death penalty, but under Jiang Zemin’s instigation of “no one is held responsible for killing Falun Gong practitioners,” Falun Gong practitioners have commonly been tortured to tragic deaths all over the country.

The Chinese Constitution stipulates the citizens’ right of appeal if one has suffered an injustice. Nevertheless, the CCP uses plainclothes policemen or hires local thugs to stop, arrest, and send appellants back home, even putting them into labor camps.

6. Killing One to Warn Others. The persecutions of Zhang Zhixin, Yu Luoke and Lin Zhao[30] are all such examples.

7. Using Suppression to Conceal the Truth of Killing. Famous people with international influence are usually suppressed but not killed by the CCP. The purpose of this is to conceal the killing of those whose deaths will not draw public attention. For example, during the campaign of Suppression of the Counter-Revolutionaries, the CCP did not kill high-ranking KMT generals such as Long Yun, Fu Zuoyi, and Du Yuming, but instead killed lower-level KMT officers and soldiers.

The CCP’s killing has, over a long period of time, distorted the Chinese people’s souls. Now in China, many people have the tendency to kill. When terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, many Chinese cheered the attacks on mainland Chinese Internet message boards. Advocates of “total war” were heard everywhere, making people tremble with fear.

Conclusion

Due to the CCP’s information blockade, we have no way of knowing exactly how many people have died from the various movements of persecution that occurred during its rule. At least 60 million people died in the foregoing movements.

In addition, the CCP also killed ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, and other places. Information on these incidents is difficult to find. The Washington Post once estimated that the number of people persecuted to death by the CCP is as high as 80 million.

Besides the number of deaths, we have no way of knowing how many people became disabled, mentally ill, enraged, depressed, or frightened to death through the persecution they suffered. Every single death is a bitter tragedy that leaves everlasting agony to the family members of the victims.

As the Japan-based Yomiuri News once reported, the Chinese central government conducted a survey on the casualties inflicted during the Cultural Revolution in 29 provinces and municipalities directly under the central government. Results showed that nearly 600 million people were persecuted or incriminated during the Cultural Revolution, which comprises about half of China’s population.

Stalin once said that the death of one man is a tragedy, but the death of 1 million is merely a statistic.

When told that many people starved to death in Sichuan Province, Li Jingquan, the former party secretary of Sichuan Province, remarked, “Which dynasty didn’t have people die?”

Mao Zedong said, “Casualties are inevitable for any struggle. Death often occurs.” This is the atheist communists’ view on life. That’s why 20 million people died as a result of persecution during Stalin’s regime, which constitutes 10 percent of the population of the former USSR.

The CCP has killed at least 80 million people, which was also nearly 10 percent of the nation’s population [at the end of the Cultural Revolution]. The Khmer Rouge killed 2 million people, or one quarter of Cambodia’s population at that time. In North Korea, the death toll from famine is estimated to be over 1 million. These are all bloody debts owed by the communist parties.

Random killing is the most powerful way to maintain terror.

Evil cults sacrifice people and use their blood to worship evil specters. Since its beginnings, the Communist Party has continued to kill people to commemorate its “class struggles,” “inter-party struggles,” and other fallacies.

When it couldn’t kill those outside the Party, it would even kill its own people. It even put its own party general secretary, marshals, generals, ministers, and others on the sacrificial altar of the evil cult.

Many think the CCP should be given time to improve itself, saying that it is quite restrained in its killings now. First of all, killing one person still makes one a murderer.

Moreover, because killing is one of the methods the CCP uses to govern its terror-based regime, the CCP ratchets its killings up and down according to its needs.

The CCP’s killing is, in general, unpredictable. When people lack a strong sense of fear, the CCP could kill more to increase their sense of terror. When people are already fearful, killing a few could maintain the sense of terror. When people can’t help but fear the CCP, then announcing the intention to kill, with no need really to kill, would be enough for the CCP to maintain terror.

After having experienced countless political and killing movements, people have formed a conditioned-reflex response to the CCP’s terror. Therefore, there is no need for the CCP to even mention killing. Even the propaganda machine’s tone of mass criticism is enough to bring back people’s memories of terror.

The CCP would adjust the intensity of its killing once people’s sense of terror changes. The magnitude of killing itself is not the goal of the CCP. The key is its consistency in killing for the sake of maintaining power.

The CCP has not become lenient, nor has it laid down its butcher’s knife. Conversely, the people have become more obedient. Once the people stand up to request something that goes beyond the tolerance of the CCP, the CCP will not hesitate to kill.

Random killing is the most powerful way to maintain terror. In the large-scale killings that took place previously, the CCP intentionally kept vague the standards by which it selected people for punishment, defined “crimes,” and determined sentences.

To avoid being included as the targets for killing, people would often restrict themselves to a “safe zone” based on their own judgment. Such a safe zone was sometimes even narrower than the one that the CCP intended to set.

That’s why, in every single movement, people tend to act like “a leftist rather than a rightist.” As a result, a movement is oftentimes enlarged beyond its intended scale because people at different levels voluntarily impose restrictions on themselves to ensure their own safety.

The lower the level, the crueler the movement became. Such society-wide, voluntary intensification of terror, stems from the CCP’s random killings.

In its long history of killing, the CCP has metamorphosed itself into a depraved serial killer. Through killing, it satisfies its perverted sense of the ultimate power of deciding people’s life and death. Through killing, it eases its own innermost fear. Through killing, it suppresses social unrest and dissatisfaction caused by its earlier murders.

Today, the compounded bloody debts of the CCP have made a benevolent solution impossible. It can only rely on intense pressure and totalitarian rule to maintain its existence until its final moment.

Despite occasionally disguising itself through restoring the reputation of its murder victims, the CCP’s bloodthirsty nature has never changed. It will be even less likely to change in the future.

For the other Commentaries, please see the Table of Contents.

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[29] According to Clearwisdom.net, Falun Gong’s official website, Jiang Zemin had ordered that Falun Gong practitioners be killed without mercy, and that any death be counted as suicide. See “Sweden: Letter from Falun Dafa Association to Foreign Minister Regarding the Geneva UN Human Rights Conference.”

[30] Yu Luoke was a human rights thinker and activist who was killed by the CCP during the Cultural Revolution. His monumental essay “On Family Background,” written on Jan. 18, 1967, was one that enjoyed the widest circulation and the most enduring influence of all the essays reflecting the non-CCP thought during the years of the Cultural Revolution. Lin Zhao, a Beijing University student majoring in journalism, was classified as a rightist in 1957 for her independent thinking and outspoken criticism of the communist movement. She was charged with conspiracy to overthrow the people’s democratic dictatorship and arrested in 1960. In 1962, she was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment. She was killed by the CCP on April 29, 1968, as a counter-revolutionary.