A Chinese Maoist sledges the New York Times

 (The NYT captioned this poster: “Xu Yang says he reads Mao because he wants to make China a better place. The avatar of his social media account is an old poster depicting Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong.”)

The New York Times' coverage of China's "Maoist youth" is a case of looking at the sky from the bottom of a well.[1]

 

(Translator’s preface: This piece recently appeared on the Chinese “Utopia” website. This is one of China’s “red websites” which defends the legacy of Mao Zedong and criticises the country’s capitalist policies. It appears to survive by also posting the speeches of Xi Jinping. In this article, a Chinese Maoist argues that a New York Times analysis of young Chinese who are embracing Mao Zedong’s legacy is wide of the mark, a put-down reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s searing “But something is happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?” Anyway,  I’ve given it my best shot and the inevitable errors and clumsiness of expression are may own.)

 The New York Times, the prestigious international "mainstream" media, has recently published a report entitled '"Who are our enemies?" The Young Chinese Who Have  'Embraced' Mao"'. First of all, it is gratifying that the international media "friends" who have always watched the events in China as "civilised people" looking down on "barbarians" from the sky, have finally noticed that in today's a world, and in a China where the rightist atmosphere is so strong, there is a new species of "Maoist youth", and they are not to be underestimated. To be honest, the Maoist youth is the real healthy force in contemporary China, the one that influences the real future of China and the world - if the New York Times or any other big Western media does not understand the Maoist youth of China in this sense, then no matter how many words they waste, they are just sitting in the well and watching the sky, and are willing to be the frog at the bottom of the well.

　　

(Above: a graphic from the Chinese edition of the NYT with the headline that reads “Who are our enemies?” The young Chinese who have‘embraced’ Mao Zedong”)

 

Unfortunately, we cannot expect any intellectual depth from the New York Times. It merely acts as a meat horn[2] for Western bourgeois liberal ideology, reporting on China's leftist youth in that usual style of reporting on China. So what about this China report in the New York Times? Only the content is finally new, but the style and ideological leanings are as disgusting as ever. This report on China's leftist youth is extremely unfriendly from the start.

 It describes Mao as "Decades of uninterrupted political campaigns led by the former supreme leader of the Communist Party, which claimed millions of lives”... hehe! The story's level of knowledge of current and contemporary Chinese history is below that of any Maoist youth with a minimum of awareness in China today. What flows from the New York Times must be challenged: what precisely are the types of people who have taken the lives of an unknown number of ordinary people in China, in the recent past? It is precisely the foreign imperialist reactionaries, including the US empire you serve, and the domestic reactionaries such as Chiang Kai-shek who are the lackeys of imperialism. Do not forget that in the mid to late 1940s, not even 100 years ago, it was you, the American Empire, who paid for the guns and Chiang Kai-shek paid for the men and "threw 475 million compatriots into the unprecedentedly brutal civil war". Chiang Kai-shek's reactionaries "slaughtered millions of men, women and children with bombers, fighter planes, artillery, tanks, rocket-propelled grenades, automatic rifles, petrol bombs, gas bombs and other murderous weapons supplied by the US imperialists", while the US imperialists "relied on them to plunder China's territorial rights, territorial sea rights, airspace rights, river navigation rights, commercial privileges, domestic and diplomatic privileges, and even the privilege of killing, crushing and raping women with impunity". The "decades of uninterrupted political campaigns" of Teacher Mao[3] and the vanguard under his leadership have saved the lives of untold numbers of Chinese civilians and raised the consciousness of untold numbers of Chinese civilians against imperialism and domestic reactionaries, which has raised China from the underground and helped the anti-imperialist cause and socialist cause of many brothers and sisters from the oppressed nations and the oppressed classes in the world.

 

(Above: Mao on the Tiananmen rostrum with Zhu De. Photo supplied with Utopia website article)

　　

(Above: the caption reads “Nujoma: ‘During the Namibian War of Independence I used Chairman Mao’s method of warfare”. Samuel Daniel Shafiishuna Nujoma, (May 2, 1929-) was one of what Mao Zedong called "our poor friends in Africa”. He became the first President of Namibia after its independence. Photo supplied with Utopia website article.)

 You have a scholar in the West, Julia Lovell, who wrote about the Opium Wars, and a book called Maoism: A Global History - from the title alone, yes, Maoism is a badly forgotten global history, a global history of the anti-imperialist revolution - didn't you cover this book in the New York Times?　

　

(Above: an image from the Utopia website article of the NYT Chinese edition article headed “Looking back at the years of ‘Maoism’s’ global influence)

Just as the new China created by Mao is essentially a "leftist country", your United States is essentially a "rightist country". Whether it is the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, they are both political parties of the right (bourgeois) forces, and their "left and right" distinction only means that they are within the American bourgeoisie, that is, the Democratic Party is the left wing of the bourgeoisie and the Republican Party is the right wing of the bourgeoisie, and so on. The New York Times, which is regarded by many as a "leftist" media, is just a bourgeois leftist media, and is by and large the mouthpiece of the left-wing forces of the American bourgeoisie. Therefore, how can any "rational neutrality and objectivity" be obtained from it? How can one get from it a minimum of impartial opinion about Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao and the communist movement? It is certain and unquestionable that a true and thoroughgoing communist will defeat not only the forces of capital in all its forms in his country, but also the imperialist forces of the US and the West behind the so-called international "mainstream" media such as the New York Times.

Another problem with this New York Times piece is that it only reports on China's Green Left, as if there were not a large group of old left and centre-left comrades who have stood their ground for decades and fought resolutely against the forces of the revisionist right and external imperialism. One-sidedness is also a form of subjectivity. Here, the New York Times, like the rather self-righteous over-the-top vlogger Wang Taotao, ignores the cross-generational, or rather cross-age, character of Chinese leftist forces. This characteristic is a manifestation of the never-ending influence of Teacher Mao and Maoism in present-day China, which has further increased with the changing realities of an increasingly capital-dominated society and of capitalist oppression in contemporary society.

You have to tell the New York Times: Do you want to know about the so-called "Chinese left"? Start reading the first sentence of Comrade Mao's Anthology, which you blackened, and although you mechanically quote that sentence, you don't seem to be fully understood yet.

　　

(The Utopia website used this picture of part of the NYT article which reads ‘Many social media users quote the first sentence of Mao Zedong’s Selected Works Vol 1: “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?” written in 1925. “This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.”’)

"In interviews and online posts, many young people said they could see Mao's analysis of Chinese society as an ongoing class struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors." -- Please translate, what does it mean to say that "Mao's analysis of Chinese society can be seen as an ongoing class struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors"? It is not that "Mao's analysis of Chinese society can be seen as an ongoing class struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors", but that the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist analysis tells us that Chinese society, since its entry into class society, has itself been in the midst of "an ongoing class struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors". Not only is this true of Chinese society, but also of your American society, your Western society, which has spent many years in "continuous class struggle between the oppressed and the oppressed". Without this "continuous class struggle between the oppressed and the oppressed", we do not know how society moved forward, nor do you know from which stone the so-called "civilization" of the bourgeoisie of the United States and the West today emerged from. As the Teacher said: "Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated." This is history, this is the history of civilisation over thousands of years. Those who interpret history from this point of view are called historical materialists, and those who stand against this point of view are historical idealists." Obviously, the New York Times and the like cannot be expected to report on things, including China, from the historical materialist viewpoint of class struggle, which is why they always report such a mess, and most of the China-related reporting by your "big" Western media is childish and ridiculous in the eyes of the truly enlightened Maoist youth.　

(The NYT captioned this photo “A group of children on a school trip dressed as Red Army soldiers in front of a statue of Mao Zedong at the Jinggangshan Revolutionary Museum.” Jiggangshan was a remote mountainous area where Mao established the first Chinese Soviet and the Red Army.)

If the New York Times story is laughable when it comes to historical and theoretical issues, it is less obvious when it comes to real issues: "Many people say their greatest enemy is the capitalists who exploit them. The biggest target of their outpouring of anger is Jack Ma, the founder of the e-commerce empire Alibaba." "...... Many young people see the merchant class as exploitative, and Mao's words justify their anger at it." As well as the quoted line from who knows who, "bureaucrats and capital are highly integrated," does a capitalist have to have the word "capitalist" engraved on his forehead to be a capitalist? Does a capitalist have to look like a capitalist, like Jack Ma, to be a capitalist? In fact, there are three capitalist forces: (1) private capitalist forces, especially monopolistic private capitalist forces like Jack Ma; (2) capitalist forces with red labels, a class of which Teacher Mao has long had a profound understanding and incisive analysis; and (3) the imperialist forces of US and Western capital behind your New York Times, which are vicious and the bastion of reaction in the world today.

"Many young people think that the merchant class is exploitative" - the problem is not who we think is exploitative, but that they themselves are exploitative, and without it they are not. And you American capitalists are not exploitative? "Mao's words provide justification for their anger at the merchant class" - it is not his words that provide justification in the first place, it is what he says that is factually correct, that is right, that is useful because it is correct, not that is useful because it "provides justification" or something like that. Why would anyone pick up his words again if they were wrong and not to the point? Why is it a hard fact that "China has become fertile ground for the revival of Mao Zedong's thought"? Here, your American pragmatic way of thinking is invalid and cannot explain the "Maoist revival" which you also know to be true.

 　　

 (Above: photo with the Utopia website article – Chinese youths promising to turn the whole world upside down ad bring about the Internationale)

 "Young people are becoming more nationalistic and more immersed in communist ideology" - this is another example of "pink" and "crimson " being indistinguishable"! The Western media is not above Wang Taotao's normal level. If you, journalist "friends" of the New York Times, had followed the teachings of our Teacher Mao and investigated carefully, you would have found that the "pink-deep red split" has surfaced among young Chinese people, and in the whole field of Chinese public opinion. This is a reflection of the complexity of social thinking in China, a deeper problem than you can observe in the general Western media. Among the young people in China who believe in communism, there is a section that even rejects nationalism very much. What do you know about China? Of course, it is necessary to look at it both separately and together. The true mature communists do not reject nationalism, which cannot be eliminated at this stage, and only the communists are truly and thoroughly nationalist, because the proletariat is the true representative of the interests of the whole nation, while the capitalists are already without a motherland because they do not need one.

In a nutshell, if the New York Times tries to bring rhythm to the Chinese "Maoist youth", it will probably be futile and will be questioned. For this generation of Chinese Maoist youth, unlike the previous generation of liberal "River Elegy" youth[4] with whom you are more familiar in the Western media, for the most part has no illusions of "borrowing" from your Western capitalist forces. On the contrary, it seems that you in the US and the West look like a pre-socialist barbarism that needs to be enlightened and liberated, so that you have to be tricked by the Trump crowd. 

　　

(Image above supplied with Utopia website article)

The historical mission of the truly radical Maoist youth is not only to achieve a more complete socialism in one country, but also to inspire the socialist consciousness of their proletarian brothers and sisters everywhere and to support the anti-capitalist socialist movement everywhere until the current globalised capitalist world is transformed into a globalised communist world and the red flag is flown high on the blue planet!

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[1] The four character expression “looking at the sky from the bottom of a well”” means to have a very narrow view of things, to be mistaken through ignorance.

[2] Official media mouthpiece

[3] During the Mao cult of the Cultural Revolution, Mao was continually referred to as the Great Leader, Great Teacher, Great Supreme Commander and Great Helmsman. Mao, who as a young man had taught in a primary school, did not like these and said he only wanted to be known as “teacher”.

[4] “River Elegy” was a six-part TV documentary aired in 1988 that criticised China’s traditional culture as backward and praised the outward-looking cultures of the West.  The former was symbolised by the yellow earth and Yellow River, the latter by the blue seas of the open ocean. By portraying the waters of the river emptying out into the sea, it suggested that China’s revival could only come from merging with the bourgeois liberal ideologies of the imperialists.  The documentary was very popular with those young people who flocked to Tiananmen Square in 1989 hoping to force China to a more open embrace of capitalism.