(Translator's preface - this is a piece of writing which contains some statements that I would dispute, but its overall statement of the plight of the Chinese working class rings true. Above, a protest against a bank that withheld depositors' finances in Henan Province, 2022.)
Zhao Dagong: Eating bitterness twice, suffering twice?
--The feelings of unemployed veteran workers
When Chairman Mao was alive, especially during the Cultural
Revolution, which was the happiest period for the working class and the vast
number of poor peasants, the dictatorship of the proletariat was implemented for
every worker and every poor peasant, and we deeply experienced the sense of
honour of being the masters of the country. The great leader Chairman Mao
supported the workers' propaganda teams to be stationed in government organs,
schools, enterprises and institutions, so that those capitalist-roaders and
stinking old ninth[1]
could receive re-education from the working class. What moved us even more was
that Chairman Mao did not want to enjoy the mangoes sent by foreign friends all
by himself, but had the working class in the revolutionary struggle in mind and
gave them to us, the working class, to see the mangoes for the first time and
to encourage us to carry the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the end![2]
We were so excited that we could not help but chant over and over again,
"Long live Chairman Mao, long live Chairman Mao!" At last, under the
wise leadership of the great leader Chairman Mao, the proletariat had become
the master of the country. All secondary school students and intellectuals had
to "learn to work, learn to farm and learn to labour", and they had
to respond to Chairman Mao's great call to "go to the countryside and
receive re-education from the poor peasants", "the countryside is a
vast world, there is much to be done there". What an era it was, when Wu
Guixian[3]
and Chen Yonggui both became state leaders, even though Wu Guixian did not know
which department Li Shizhen[4]
belonged to, and that is precisely what characterises our poorly educated
working class! Although Chen Yonggui[5]
could not read or write much, he had to wear a white towel around his head and
wore cloth shoes with a thousand layers of soles, that was the true nature of
our poor peasants! We are the ones who have to "step on cow dung and roll
around in mud" to kill those capitalist-roaders and the stinking ninth, so
that the working class and the poor peasants can take the historical stage of
the superstructure and bring down those capitalist-roaders, revisionists,
stinking ninth, traitors, spies, landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries,
bad elements, rightists, and the like. If they are allowed to return and
capitalism is restored, the working class and the poor peasants will have to
suffer twice again.
The sea has changed, the world has changed, and indeed
capitalism has really been restored and our working class has lost its old
glory. To say that China is still a country under the dictatorship of the
proletariat and that the working class is in charge is bullshit. We used to say
that the working class was the main force of socialist construction, but now we
have long since "retired to the second line" and industrial workers
have become a burden to society, a liability to society. What is the social
status of our workers? Even if we are fooled, we should be fed, housed and
given unemployment benefits to cover our basic living expenses. As the saying
goes, people are poor, horses are thin, and we no longer think about the
"dictatorship of the proletariat", but the Constitution still talks
about the "four persists".[6]
The Communist Party has already abandoned the so-called "four persists",
so what else can we poor workers who have "retired to the second
line" insist on?
The state-run factories are now either sold to private
individuals, have some kind of joint venture with foreign capitalists, or are
simply closed down or are in a dying struggle. People no longer talk about
class, politics, or the working class leading everything, or sing the
Internationale. Open your eyes and look at the world of flowers: there are more
thieves, more corruption, more bribes, more liars, more people cursing the
leaders of the Central Government, more people laid off (not
"unemployed"), more buildings, more foreign goods, more hotels and
nightclubs, more divorces, more sexually transmitted diseases, more drug
addicts, more mental illnesses, more murderers, more suicides, more
practitioners of gongfu, more people believing in superstition, more religious
people, more modern weapons, more people going abroad ......
It really fulfils the old saying, "If we let those
capitalist-roaders, revisionists and the landlords, the rich peasants, the bad
elements and the rightists come to power, we, the working class and the poor peasants,
will eat bitterness twice and suffer twice". Many laid-off workers were
not convinced and took to the streets to demonstrate and cause trouble, wanting
to work, to eat, to fight corruption and to oppose those who deprived us of our
right to work and live. If the military and police are sent to suppress them, they
will have to go home again. Look at the leaders of our state-owned enterprises,
which one of them is Jiao Yulu?[7]
Which one of them is Kong Fansen?[8]
More like Chen Xitong,[9]
Wang Baosen[10],
Hu Changqing[11],
Cheng Kejie[12],
the two vice-ministers of the Ministry of Public Security, the two
vice-governors of Hubei Province, and the countless others at the city and
county levels such as ....... How many central leaders, ministers,
commissioners, governors, secretaries, directors, mayors, county commissioners,
directors, deans, inspectors have turned the flesh of the people into meat and
fish for the rich, and preyed upon and victimised the people. The people's wealth created by the people has been
misappropriated. You, the Communist Party have been talking about fighting
corruption every year, every month, every day, you have killed some corrupt
officials, you have also made a legal system, but why are there more and more
corrupt officials and criminals? Why is it that the corruption incidents in
Zhanjiang, Xiamen, Shantou and Shenzhen that have rocked the country and the
world have been repeated, and the more you fight corruption, it as if the fire
of corruption has started a prairie fire, as if corruption cannot be burned
out, the spring breeze blows again. I dare say, "Chinese people are not
afraid of death", including Chinese corrupt officials, who are also not
afraid of death, and the grand words of corrupt officials are: "You can try
and kill us! We corrupt officials can't be killed, we'll be good men, corrupt
officials, again in 20 years!"
When Chairman Mao was alive, there were so few corrupt
officials that it could be said that there were only a handful of them, and
even the number of criminal cases was pitifully low compared to today. At that
time, the wages of workers were not much worse than those of factory managers,
but despite this, Chairman Mao still criticised the "bourgeois right"
and the "eight-grade wage system". The country was so poor that the
privileged officials could only make use of special shops and so on for
material benefits, so there was no corruption!
When Chairman Mao was alive, although the country was poor,
everyone was poor. Between 1960 and 1962, 30 million peasants died of
starvation, and people in the cities were half starved to death, but no one
rebelled, and there was no serious corruption. Apart from the harsh rule of the
Communist Party (like North Korea today) and the putting the blame on the
Soviet Union (deceiving the Chinese people), absolute communism
(egalitarianism) and the big pot of rice were also the main reasons. Everyone
was poor, so if the people revolted against anyone, they could go to the
governor's house and see that he also did not have enough to eat. Chairman Mao
was not afraid of death. He told the leaders of some Eastern European country
(Poland? Czech Republic? I can't remember) that China was not afraid of a
nuclear war.
[1] This was a term originating in the
Yuan Dynasty, but revived during the Cultural revolution, when it was directed
at intellectuals. At the top of the Yuan hierarchy were officials, Buddhist
monks and Daoist priests, while at the bottom were prostitutes, Confucian
scholars and beggars. During the Cultural revolution, the targets of struggle
were the landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements,
rightists, spies, traitors and capitalist-roaders. The intellectuals were the
lowest level of such targets.
[2] In 1968, just after ultra-leftist
student at Qinghua University in Beijing had clashed with 30,000 workers sent
in by Mao to end factional strife, the Pakistani foreign minister had presented
Mao with a gift of 40 mangoes. Rather than keep them for himself, Mao set them
on to the workers at Qinghua. At the tie, the tropical fruit was unknown to
most in China’s north. The gesture was eulogised and became the subject of
posters and Mao badges as a symbol of Chairman Mao’s concern for the well-being
of the ordinary workers and peasants.
[3] Wu Guixian was a female textile worker
of poor peasant origin who was promoted as a national model and rose to become
a member of the 9th, 10th and 11th Central
Committees and, from January 1975 to September 1977 a Vice-Premier of the State
Council. After the Dengists seized power, she was allowed to “retire” and went
back to her textile factory.
[4] Li Shizhen (1518 – 1593) was a famous
herbalist and long regarded as the father of Chinese traditional medicine. The
reference to Li suggests that Wu Guixian was uneducated, a positive attribute
since her knowledge came from practice, not from the study of books.
[5] Chen Yonggui (1915-1986) was the
poor peasant who guided dirt poor Dazhai (Tachai) production brigade along the
path of collectivisation, prompting Mao to issue the call “In agriculture, learn
from Dazhai”. Chen, a familiar figure in his peasant garb, was elected to the
Central Committee in 1969, to the Politburo in 1973, and became a vice-Premier
in 1975. However, he lost all these
positions after the Dengist clique came to power and returned to agricultural
work outside of Beijing.
[6] The “four persists” were coined by
Deng Xiaoping as a cover for his restoration of capitalism. They were persist with
the Party’s leadership, persist with emancipating the mind and seeking truth
from facts, persist with being people-oriented, and persist with reform,
development and stability. Xi Jinping has updated the list to include 14 “persists”.
[7] Jiao Yulu (1922-1964) was a model of
Communist leadership, going where the condition were difficult and doing
everything for the people. In 1966 a campaign to learn from Jiao Yulu was
begun.
[8] Kong Fansen (1944-1994), said to
have been the 44th grandson of Confucius (Kong Fuzi), joined the Party
in 1968 and in 1979 volunteered to work in Tibet where conditions were extremely
difficult. He is regarded as a leader in the mould of Jiao Yulu.
[9] Chen Xitong (1930-2013) former
deputy-Mayor of Beijing and member of the Politburo was sentenced to 16 years
imprisonment in 1998 for embezzlement and dereliction of duty.
[10]
Wang Baosen was a former member of the Standing Committee of the Beijing
Municipal Party Committee and deputy mayor. He was accused of embezzling more
than 250,000 yuan and 20,000 US dollars of public funds; of embezzling more
than 100 million yuan and more than 25 million US dollars of public funds for
his brother, his wife and other closely related people to carry out
profit-making activities. He committed suicide.
[11] Hu Changqing, (1948-2000) was a
deputy governor of Jiangxi Province who was executed for offering and accepting
bribes and for having a large amount of assets of unknown origin.
[12] Cheng Kejie (1933-2000) was, at the
time of his arrest for accepting bribes worth more than 41.09 million yuan, was
Chairman of the People's Government of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and a
member of the 9th National People’s Congress. He was the first state
leader to be sentenced to death for corruption since the founding of New China.
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