Posted by kasama on July 15, 2011
We received the following report from a long-time supporter of Kasama.Kasama Comrades! Greetings from your Kasama South China Bureau!
I hope you will not mind me sharing some observations.
The Three Wise Men
Billboard in south China mocked among the population
No sooner had I last remarked about the fading image of Deng Xiaopeng when the city officials here erected a huge billboard him as well as Mao, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. The joke around town now is that the three wise men are not very wise and no one is referring to Mao.
The only upside to seeing this ugly lie is to hear the denunciations in a carload of people as you drive by, usually of Jiang Zemin.
The current president of the PRC, Hu Jintao, is also not exempt from popular scorn as I learned at a restaurant when young business woman launched into a vehement attack on Hu for wasting the people’s money in buying up German debt.
The most hatred, however. is directed at one of the revisionist hierarchs who did not make the bill board – Li Peng, the former premier who declared martial law in Beijing in response to the Tiananmen demonstrations. It was the combination of Li and Deng that launched the military assault on the students and workers and it is Zeng and Hu who represent the leadership of the Communist Party of China since the massacre in Beijing.
From a party member I learned that Li Peng is alive and has left a trail of corruption remarkable even for this era of “it is glorious to get rich” with his son following in his footsteps through crooked real estate deals in the seaside resort of Beihai. This tradition of dynastic greed is also being maintained by the children of Deng who all became rich through nepotism and are apparently moving large amounts of cash out side of China to support their luxurious lifestyle abroad.
China has been transforrmed since 1980 from the most egalitarian society on earth to an country where social inequality now rivals that of Nepal, the poorest country in Asia.
The contradiction between Mao and everybody else in that official propaganda is glaring and widely known. As to that notion of serving the people it is alive and well particularly in the field I am studying. Every year I come here there are new networks of professionals and common citizens confronting the accelerating inequality that impacts rural areas and migrants in the major cities. It is a quiet movement but one which is steadily growing, as are the incidents of anger and frustration by those condemned to poverty and marginalization.
My father’s name….
The drunk young man in the expensive car hit and killed two young women. When confronted by the police he said simply,
“Wŏ bā shī Li Gang.”
Meaning “My father’s name is Li Gang.” He was promptly released because his father was a powerful party official.
The story did not end there because there were witnesses and when this hit the internet it quickly went viral. I am not sure what happened to that young man, but the phrase is universally known here as a disgusting symbol of corruption and unfairness.
That telling phrase crossed my mind today as I learned about the rampant speculation, and government denials, that Jiang Zemin is dead. The most current informed speculation has it that Jiang is not dead yet, but has no brain function and so the wait for the official version.
Whenever the news of his inevitable demise is released, it will be a problem because of the ongoing celebrations of the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party of China. There can be no more glaring contrast than the record of nepotism, corruption and greed which is the enduring legacy of Deng Xiaopeng thought in the Communist Party and the story of sacrifice and heroic service to the people now being featured throughout China.
Shopping in a local supermarket I hear the full orchestral version of “The East is Red” with mass chorus over the stores speakers:
Chairman Mao loves the people.
He is our guide to build a new China.
Hurrah, he leads us forward!
He is our guide to build a new China.
Hurrah, he leads us forward!
Several television channels feature non-stop documentaries, docudramas, and musical variety extravaganzas all depicting the revolutionary struggle against the Guomindang and the Japanese. I even got to see the see the full version of “Raise the Red Lantern” and dining with friends in an upscale restaurant I kept hearing the strains of the “Internationale.”
How exactly to fit in the news of Jiang’s demise into this evocation of the Communist Party’s long march to the liberation of China? It is no accident that Hu Jintao’s speech to the assembled party officials on July first in the Great Hall of the people featured the corrosive effects of corruption.
”If not effectively curbed, corruption will cost the Party the trust and support of the people,”
The official figures are stark and probably represent only a fraction of the reality. There were “140,000 cases of corruption across the country in 2010. A total of 146,517 Party members, including 5,098 officials at or above the county or department level, were punished for violations.” (source)
When “Serve the People” was society’s morality
Recognizing the problem is one thing but dealing with it when the ethos of “serve the people” has been replaced by the “It is glorious to get rich” is the dilemma. The route for party cadres to this new glory is through insider schemes with business ventures noted for displacing peasants, destroying the environment, and exploiting workers. For this march the leaders have been Deng Xiaopeng, Jiang Zemin and now Hu Jintao.
How to square this with the resurgent image of Mao as the enduring symbol of the People’s Republic of China? Such is the struggle for those juxtaposing Chairman Mao with his antithetical successors.
Without the Communist Party of the Long March there would have been no new China.
Without the rise to power of those like Jeng Ziamen there would be far, far fewer young men evoking the privilege of “Wŏ bā shī Li Gang.”
