Mao Anying's letter to his cousin

 

(Above; Mao Zedong and his son Mao Anying at Xiangshan in 1949)

Published on the marxwin.cn website 2022-05-28 22:47:10 Author: Mao Anying

(Translator’s preface: I have translated this from the Chinese website Marxist Victory Network (毛岸英写给表舅的信 | 马克思主义必胜网 (marxwin.cn) ). Mao Anying was the eldest son of Mao Zedong and Yang Kaihui. His mother was a revolutionary martyr, executed by the Guomindang in 1930. Mao Anying lost his life fighting against US imperialism in the War to Aid Korea, on November 25, 1950. Although this letter does not have the year in which it was written, it would appear that it was in 1949, just after Liberation. Mao Zedong was approached on a number of occasions by family members seeking special favours, and his replies, rejecting these can be seen in Vol 7 of his Selected Works [Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung: Vol. VII (marxists.org) ].  There you will find, p. 8, a letter by Mao himself to his brother-in-law, telling him not to come to Beijing, but to wait for a work assignment in Hunan. “Please do not put the government on the spot,” he wrote on October 9. Mao Anying must have discussed this with his father, for he wrote to his cousin, Yang Kaizhi’s son, on October 24.)

(Above: revolutionary martyr Yang Kaihui)

Comrade Sanli.

I have received your letter. I am very happy that you have joined the revolutionary work. The day before you left the Sanfu Hotel, I called you, but you were not at home, and when I called again the next day, the hotel staff said you had moved out. Later, I received a letter from Comrade Lin Ting, which did not mention your "whereabouts". I wanted to get back to him and ask where you were, but I lost his address along with the letter (it was burned by mistake). If you know his full address, please let me know.

I am very ashamed of my uncle's "wish to have a position as director in Changsha", as mentioned in my letter.[1] In this new era, this kind of thinking of "making it to the top" is already extremely backward, and it is especially unacceptable to think that one can "get into office" through my father.

What makes New China different from Old China, the Communist Party different from the Guomindang Party, Mao Zedong different from Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao's children's wives and uncles different from Chiang Kai-shek's children's wives and uncles, apart from other more fundamental reasons, is this: the time when the imperial relatives became rich and powerful and when the few ruled the many has gone. The time has come to live by one's own labour and talent. In this respect, the Chinese people have won a fundamental victory. I am afraid that my uncle has not yet realised this. I hope he will come to his senses slowly, otherwise it will be difficult for him to continue working in the new China.

The turnaround is the turnaround of the masses, not the turnaround of a few special people. The problems of life must be solved as a whole, not individually. The interests of the masses should be taken into account first and foremost. Individualism is not an option. I am going to write a letter to tell my uncle and the others frankly about these circumstances.

The reactionaries often scold the Communist Party for speaking of human feelings but having no human feelings, but if they are referring to the human feelings of helping relatives, friends and colleagues to become rich and powerful, then we in the Communist Party have no such "human feelings" and do not speak of such "human feelings". What the Communist Party has is another kind of human affection, that is, an infinite love for the people, for the toiling masses, including one's own parents, children and relatives.

Of course, the Communists have a special affection for their close relatives, their fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, wives, uncles, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, a deep affection for those who are related to them by blood and family. The Communist Party not only does not deny this special feeling, but also consolidates it and strives to promote it in the right way for the benefit of the people, in line with their interests. But if this special feeling goes beyond the personal sphere and contradicts the interests of the people, the Communist Party will stand firmly on the side of the latter, that is, it will not hesitate to "destroy the family".

I love my grandmother, I have a deep and indescribable affection for her, but she may now be calling me "ungrateful" for not looking after the Yang family and the Xiang family[2], and I have to live with that, and I can never and will never act against my principles. I myself am a very ordinary and small screw in a great machine, and I have no "power", no "capital", and no "ambition" to do such things to help my relatives rise to the top. As for my father, he is the most staunch opponent of this approach, because this approach is incompatible with communist ideology and Mao Zedong Thought, it is incompatible with the interests of the people, it is extremely unfair, and it is extremely unreasonable.

The contradiction between proletarian collectivism - the view of the masses - and bourgeois individualism - the view of the individual - is the essence of the difference of opinion between us and our uncle. These two ideas are still in a sharp struggle even in our heads, only the former prevails. In my uncle's head, and in the heads of many others like him, the latter still prevails overwhelmingly, or all of them, although he himself may not necessarily be bad in nature.

The letter is already long, and I will not go on with it. I hope you will forgive any indiscretions.

I wish you well!

Anying on 24 October

 

 

(Above: Yang Kaihui, Mao Anying (right) and Mao Anqing)

---

[1] The uncle is Yang Kaizhi, brother of Mao’s second wife, the revolutionary martyr Yang Kaihui. Before Liberation, he successively served as the director of the Changde Mountain Forestry Bureau under the jurisdiction of the Hunan Provincial Construction Department, the technician and administrator of the Niushou Mountain Forest Farm of the Central Forestry District Administration, the technician of the Hunan Provincial Construction Department, the technician of the Hunan Provincial Agricultural Improvement Institute, the chief technician and tea master of the China Tea Company, and the director of the technical director and research office of the Hunan Provincial Department of Agriculture. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he successively served as the deputy manager of Hunan Tea Industry Company and the deputy director of Hunan Tea Business Department. After 1959, he was recuperating from illness for a long time. He was a member of the Fifth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (1978-1983) and a member of the Third and Fourth Hunan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (later elected as the vice chairman of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference). 

[2] Yang Kaihui’s parents were Yang Changji (father) and Xiang Zhenxi (mother).

Zhao Dagong: Eating bitterness twice, suffering twice? --The feelings of unemployed veteran workers

 (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.

We are not trying to go back to those days, we just miss them. It doesn't matter what kind of social system or who leads us if we can make our workers' working lives secure and if we can limit corruption to the maximum.

---

[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 9^th, 10^th and 11^th 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 44^th 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 9^th National People’s Congress. He was the first state leader to be sentenced to death for corruption since the founding of New China.

How Socialism Became Social Imperialism - Summary of the book "Reading How the Soviet Union Became a Social-Imperialist State”

 

(Translator’s preface: Officially sanctioned “red” websites in China, like Utopia from which this piece came, are quite convincing about the restoration of capitalism in China, but generally reject the description of contemporary China as “social-imperialist” - ie, socialist in words, but imperialist in deeds. This short piece purports to be a critique of a book about how the former Soviet Union became social-imperialist, but in between the lines is a critique of how China became social-imperialist. It is a pity that such views need to be disguised in this way in order to be posted on a so-called “red” website.)

The term "social-imperialism" comes from Lenin's appraisal of the Second International and the traitor Kautsky. He called them "socialists in words, imperialists in practice" i.e., social-imperialists, with the difference that Kautsky and others did not hold state power, while once the revisionists came to power, the original socialist countries would either degenerate into social-imperialist countries or become colonies of other imperialist countries, and the Soviet Union belonged to the former situation.

The economic base determines the superstructure, and to understand how socialism has become social-imperialist, we must first understand what the economic basis of capitalist imperialism and socialism is and how it came to be, so that we naturally understand what social-imperialism is.

The economic basis and most obvious feature of imperialism is monopoly. Lenin pointed out that "if imperialism is to be defined as briefly as possible, it should be said that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. "But the monopoly of capitalist imperialism is formed through the accumulation and agglomeration of capital over a long period of time (the continuous annexation of small and medium-sized enterprises by large enterprises and the union of other large enterprises), in four main forms: cartels, syndicates, trusts and conglomerates. It should be pointed out that since the monopoly of capitalism was formed over a long period of time, in the initial stage of capitalism its relations of production were adapted to the productive forces, and it was only at the stage of imperialism, with the complete decay of capitalist relations of production, that imperialism became "dying capitalism". Social imperialism, on the other hand, revealed its decadence and decline from the very beginning, as will be discussed later.

The economic basis of socialism is the socialist state-run economy, which was formed after the proletariat seized power through violent revolution and confiscated the monopoly capital and enterprises of the former capitalist countries without compensation. This state-run economy controls the economic lifeline of the entire socialist country, is the main economic basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and plays an important role in supporting and guiding the transformation of agriculture, the individual economy in urban and rural areas, and in the transition from the economy of collective ownership to the ownership of the whole people. At the same time, its development is inseparable from the support of the collective ownership economy and the partial individual ownership economy, which complement each other and are indispensable.

However, "the bourgeoisie is in the Communist Party", the whole socialist stage is full of struggles between two classes and two lines, and the ideology of the bourgeoisie will persist for a long time, all this determines that "the restoration of capitalism is possible at any time". Once the bourgeois spokesmen of the Party seize the leadership and pursue a revisionist line, the nature of the Party and the country as a whole will change fundamentally. And the socialist economy itself is an economy highly integrated with the state power, for it is only under the leadership of the proletarian power that the socialist state economy can play its range of roles. Once the leadership is usurped, the nature of such an enterprise will also change, from serving the working people as a whole to serving the nascent bureaucratic bourgeoisie, "The question of why is a fundamental question, a question of principle." This metamorphosed and degenerated state economy then became the economic basis of social-imperialism.

Social-imperialism still has the five characteristics pointed out by Lenin, except that, as mentioned above, social-imperialism is the result of the degeneration of the erroneous line carried out by the revisionists within the socialist countries, so it has no progressive significance to speak of, but is decayed and backward from the beginning, and its interests are sharply opposed to those of the working people. For example, a soviet revisionist agricultural trust manager shouted "The trust is my home, I can do whatever I want", and another Soviet revisionist official barked wildly: "Are you speaking for the Party or do you speak for the people?"

Since the economic base determines the superstructure, and since the economic base of social-imperialism is the state economy serving the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, the actual rulers of the social-imperialist state are the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, while the working class aristocracy and a section of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie and their intellectuals, who are bribed with high monopoly profits, are the social class base of bureaucratic rule.

The future is bright, but the road is tortuous. The degeneration of socialism into social-imperialism (and eventually its disintegration, as in the Soviet Union) is undoubtedly a huge setback in the communist movement, but everything always "goes to its opposite, and then to the negation of the negation". With the help of proletarian intellectuals and revolutionaries, the working people are gradually awakening. When this force that determines the development of history once again merges into a revolutionary torrent, the light of socialism will surely shine on the earth again!

 

Small-town nerds and Maoist thought: my intellectual journey

 

(Translator's preface: This is the 23rd and final chapter of a 2020 research study of contemporary Chinese workplaces. I've only previously put up one of the chapters (here: servethepeople: Day in the Life of a Chinese Telemarketing Company (mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com)) and hope that one day the entire work can be posted somewhere. The image is the front cover of Life Weekly, a mainstream Chinese publication which, whilst recognising the existence of the problem of "small town nerds", tries to convince them that there are solutions to their problems.  Its caption reads: "Small town nerds: how to stand on your own two feet".)

Chapter 23: Small-town nerds[1] and Maoist thought: my intellectual journey

Editor's note: This article is very well written. Firstly, it is good in that it is highly representative and typical; secondly, it is good in that it is logically clear and draws out a narrative of how the children of the proletariat wake up from the delusion of education to change their class; finally, it is good in that the author bravely points out that the way out for the small-town question-makers lies in returning to the proletariat.

The author of this article is a "small-town nerd", that is to say, he comes from a poor background, relies on his own efforts to get into a prestigious school, but after entering society, he finds that the prestigious school does not change his fate. He is struggling in the cracks of the class, but society does not stop beating him because of his struggle. It is against this backdrop that the author comes across the writings of Chairman Mao. Reading Chairman Mao's writings gave the author new tools to observe and analyse society. The author finally realised the nature of the current higher education, "essentially the bourgeoisie, in order to ease the class contradictions, has deliberately taken out a little resource to distribute to the highly educated people, creating a belief system for the proletariat to obtain a high income by acquiring a high degree ...... Under the poison of highly educated beliefs, the proletariat at large has pinned its hopes on its next generation, given up its rights and interests, and its sense of struggle has been constantly weakened. And the highly educated next generation they have so painstakingly nurtured, the few who have tasted the sweetness of capital and are rapidly turning around to oppress the proletariat, while the others who are struggling for the scraps they have sought but not received, are the small-town nerds."

What is even more rare is that the author not only recognizes the nature of higher education, but also recognizes that the proletariat is the real friend of the small-town nerd: "The real friend of the small-town problem nerd is the proletariat that has painstakingly nurtured itself, just like the frog that has climbed to the mouth of the well, its friend is always the others of its kind who are still struggling at the bottom of the well. Chairman Mao said that the intellectuals are the hair and the proletariat is the skin; if the skin does not exist, how can the hair be attached? The real enemy of the small-town nerd is the bourgeoisie, the people who forge highly educated beliefs. We should not be grateful for this access; on the contrary, this access was forged by the bourgeoisie with the blood and tears of our fathers and should be acutely aware that those who built it are the real enemies."

The author concludes by talking about the confusion of small-town nerds and Marxism, parts of which I don't agree with. For example, the author says, "As the number of students from humble backgrounds who can get into prestigious schools gradually becomes smaller due to the Matthew effect on educational resources, the number of small-town nerds will also decrease, and the group of people who can quickly understand Marxism will shrink. But in the long run, when access is completely closed, more people are bound to take up the arms of Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought (they just won't understand it relatively quickly)." In fact, it is possible that the bourgeoisie will expand its intake in order to ease the pressure of employment, and although the friends being expanded are not the so-called prestigious schools of 985/211[2], the numbers are huge and groups like the small-town nerds will only grow. In addition, it is not only some of the small-town nerds who have gone to the working people, but also some of the children of urban middle class families who are bravely moving forward in the pursuit of truth, which is something that needs to be seen.

Our friends are all over the world, and our songs are spreading in all directions. As social tensions become more pronounced, there will only be more and more of such people.

I. The confusion of a small-town nerd

I am a small-town nerd from a working-class family, and I was once as confused as most people in this group. It was only after coming into contact with Mao Zedong Thought that I realised that the plight of small-town nerds was mainly the result of a failure to recognise their own class, and that only by relying on the proletariat could they have a real future.

I was born in 1996 in a rural village on the south-east coast that has since developed into a small town. My parents, both post-65, were poorly educated and worked at the lowest level of manual labour. My father was a construction worker whose smell of masonry and concrete accompanied me as I grew up, and the long hours of heavy physical labour left him with injuries and illnesses. My mother was an electronics factory worker, working an assembly line job with two days off a month and more than 11 hours a day (sometimes more than 11 hours, and only the excess was considered overtime), and with a piece-rate wage that left her with little rest. Under such working and living conditions, they spared no effort to belittle their own work, apart from hoping that I would study hard and get into a good university, so that I would never be like them.

Under the influence of this philosophy, I worked tirelessly for my university entrance exams and finally got into a 985 university. However, there was no one to tell me what to do after I went to a good university. I had nothing but problems for the previous ten years and there were people in my new environment who were better at it than me, plus I was bored with the science major I was in and even less motivated to study.

A consequence of my high-pressure state before the entrance exams, was that I began to indulge myself. I found that I had lost even my previous nerd-like skills when I graduated. I had failed two exams, had no glamorous resume, and watched many people who were not as good at swotting as I had been in the past go on to graduate school. Perhaps out of jealousy, I began to doubt my past pursuits and began to think seriously about what the aura of high education really meant. When I hit the biggest low point in my academic career, I thought of revolutionaries who had also hit low points in their lives in the past, and I wanted to understand that period of history and how Chairman Mao had come out of his low point in life. Therefore, I bought a set of Mao's Selected Works and was instantly fascinated by it.

II. Mao Zedong's thought has caused a change in my mind

In fact, every Chinese is no stranger to the life and thought of Chairman Mao, but the impression is mostly that of textbooks with their running biographies and grand political declarations, like a mathematical problem for which the answer is given directly and the middle process is omitted, which is somewhat offensive. Chairman Mao explains in detail, in plain language, how he refined his ideas step by step during the revolutionary struggle. Both of my examinations ended in failure, but they did allow me to take to heart famous historical events of the modern era, and I was quickly surprised by Chairman Mao's conviction as I knew exactly the revolutionary situation that corresponded to the writing of each essay in Mao's selection. Chairman Mao's most outstanding characteristic was not his wisdom or literary skills, but his consistent belief in the power of the people, regardless of whether the objective situation of the revolution was at a low ebb, and his confidence in the people was never at a low ebb. I was strongly attracted by Chairman Mao's ideas, which drove me to learn more about his deeds and Marxist ideas, and to start thinking about my own life and the current state of society.

In July this year, I joined a manufacturing central enterprise, along with several other undergraduates and postgraduates who graduated from 985 and 211. Shortly after joining the company, the leaders (who have a PhD) organised a welcoming wine party and forced the newcomers to drink baijiu[3] and to play the game (that is, to have a drink with each person at the table), and I could barely cope with it. After the drinks had been consumed, the leaders started to gather around the only female employee in the room and started to "educate" us newcomers that the company would focus on training us, that we should adapt to the workplace as soon as possible, and that we should learn to say appropriate things to liven up the atmosphere at the drinking party. Perhaps in the past I would have taken these "teachings" as true and aspired to be a leader, but after learning about Mao Zedong's thought, I realised that in the past I was only after the high income and social status represented by a high degree, whereas Chairman Mao was a minister of the Guomindang at the age of 33, but gave up his high position for the sake of the people at the bottom. I have since changed my past pursuits and become a committed Marxist.

With the explosion of small-town nerds, I also learnt online that many people come from similar backgrounds to me and have the same troubles. After reading Mao I knew that there must be a deeper reason for this social phenomenon and I began to try to analyse the plight of the small-town nerd in terms of Mao's thought.

III. Looking at the small-town nerd in the light of Mao's thought

It seems to me that the 5 volumes of Mao's Selected Works are about two issues throughout, one is how to distinguish between friends and enemies; the other is how to unite friends to defeat enemies. These two issues are not isolated but interlinked; as events develop, old enemies are destroyed and then new ones are created, and these new enemies may also be former friends who need to be distinguished again. These two issues cover the whole course of history from individual to national development. I used to think that by going to a prestigious school I would be able to make more friends with the upper echelons of society, thinking that all prestigious students were like-minded friends. But when I realised the gap between myself and the rest of my classmates, I was thrown into doubt. For the small-town nerds, getting into a top school is like frogs that have climbed so hard towards the top of the well that most need to stop and rest and marvel at the size of the world, and hardly know where to go next right away; whereas those with social resources are like a bird resting at the well, having seen the world beyond and knowing exactly where they are going to fly. The biggest delusion of the small-town nerds and the people around them is that frogs that have reached the same height as birds can naturally fly. I thought it was easy for students from famous schools to understand each other, so I shared my experience of studying Mao Zedong Thought with my new colleagues from the same famous school. As a result, they were dismissive, and one of them even said that I had been brainwashed. I really couldn’t imagine a CCP member who graduated from 985 graduate school, who would denounce Mao Zedong Thought as brainwashing. At that time, I realized that frogs and birds can never be the same.

So according to Mao Zedong's thought, who are the friends and who are the real enemies of the small-town nerds? In the past, high education represented high quality and the assumption of more social responsibilities, but nowadays high education is linked to high income. In essence, the bourgeoisie, in order to ease class conflicts, has deliberately taken out a little resource to distribute to the highly educated people, creating a belief system for the proletariat that acquiring high education will lead to high income, which I call the highly educated belief. Under the poison of highly educated beliefs, the proletariat at large have pinned their hopes on their next generation, given up their rights and interests, and their sense of struggle has been constantly weakened. The highly educated next generation they have painstakingly nurtured, a few of whom have tasted the sweetness of capital, are quick to turn around and oppress the proletariat, while others are struggling for the scraps of food that they have not yet received, and these are the small-town nerds. But they generally despise the manual workers and few, if any, turn back to the proletariat that nurtured them.

Unlike Hinduism, which emphasises the reincarnation of nothingness, highly educated beliefs still have a very small chance of success, but those who do succeed invariably betray the proletariat. Under the influence of highly educated beliefs, more and more parents are sending their children into this only avenue, and with the downturn in the world economic situation making the bourgeoisie reluctant to put up the resources they had originally parted with, the avenue is narrowing, a phenomenon some call “involution”.

It follows that the real friend of the small-town nerd is the proletariat that has painstakingly nurtured itself, just like the frog that climbs to the mouth of the well, its friend is always the rest of its kind that is still struggling at the bottom. Chairman Mao said that the intellectuals are the hair and the proletariat is the skin; if the skin does not exist, how can the hair be attached? The real enemy of the small-town nerd is the bourgeoisie, the people who forge highly educated beliefs. We should not be grateful for this access; on the contrary, this access was forged by the bourgeoisie with the blood and tears of our fathers and we should be acutely aware that the people who built it are the real enemies.

In my opinion, small-town nerds are people who can understand and accept Maoist thought. Firstly, we have a certain stock of knowledge and the ability to learn, we know the history of the revolution and can understand and digest the theoretical knowledge of Marxism; secondly, the increased difficulty of acquiring wealth and status for small-town nerds has forced us to re-examine the highly educated beliefs built by the bourgeoisie; finally, small-town nerds are able to understand the condition of the working class, their families of origin are either proletarian or other underclass groups, who are naturally on the side of the proletariat.

We have a strong desire to change the situation of our fathers and mothers, and we should and must extend our sympathy for our parents to the working class and working people as a whole if we are to have any hope.

Opposing highly educated beliefs does not mean that one should give up high qualifications, but that one should not pursue them for material gain. On the contrary, the proletarian ranks need highly educated and qualified people, and they need someone to study in-depth knowledge of Marxist theory. The old generation of revolutionary leaders basically had a solid theoretical background. Small-town nerds should actively study and spread Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought in the present day. However, there are still many small-town nerds who dismiss these theories as "brainwashing". For this reason, Marxist-related courses in universities are largely to blame. The content of textbooks nowadays is always geared towards examinations, and the questions in examinations are simply about what Chairman Mao did and what ideas he put forward at what time. Apart from being boring and dogmatic, such content is also filled with a heroic view of history. Although there are phrases such as "Chairman Mao relied on the people to achieve victory", there is no explanation of the role played by the people, and the constant repetition of such phrases only reflects the role of Mao Zedong alone. The heroic view of history can stifle human initiative, erase the contribution of the people in history, and make people think that revolution is only the business of one or two leaders. Throughout his life, Chairman Mao devoted himself to mobilising the power of the people and raising their consciousness. The language of Mao's Selected Works is so approachable also because Chairman Mao tried so hard to pass on his ideas to his readers, and he wanted everyone to carry on his cause: "The spring wind blows amid profuse willow wands, Six hundred million in this land all equal Yao and Shun"[4].

IV. The present difficulties of small-town nerds and other Marxists

One is the influence of negative paternal thinking. Under the influence of highly educated beliefs, parents devalue the manual labour they perform, while having a weak sense of rights and struggle, and this thinking more or less affects the next generation. For me, the mud-covered workers were my parents, the group I knew and was closest to, while the well-dressed capitalists in the city skyscrapers did not interest me even if they earned more. And there are many small-town do-gooders who are influenced by their parents and their highly educated beliefs to look down on manual labourers and to be willingly exploited by capitalists.

Secondly, because of the Matthew effect on educational resources, the number of students from humble backgrounds who can get into top schools will gradually become fewer, and the number of small-town nerds will also decrease, and the group of people who can understand Marxism quickly will shrink. But in the long run, when access is completely closed, more people are bound to take up the arms of Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought (they just won't understand it as quickly, relatively speaking).

Thirdly, society as a whole has a mindset that emphasises science over literature. Science and engineering education strengthened people's understanding of the natural sciences and promoted scientific and technological progress. But it has neglected thinking about social issues and the cultivation of the humanities. Except for a few highly qualified scientists, the vast majority of people trained in science and engineering will become a screw in the service of capital operations, a product of the alienation of labour, thus neglecting to think about social humanity. I was also disgusted with my undergraduate major because I understood that the prospect of the major was to spend day after day in a lab, and felt that life was meaningless, when for some people this kind of work is the only opportunity for upward mobility. This is one of the reasons why I went from small-town nerd to Marxist.

 

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[1] "Small town nerds", is a new item of online vocabulary, and refers to "young students who were born in small towns, study hard, and are good at taking exams, but lack a certain vision and resources."  “Small town nerds” originated from a group of more than 50,000 members on Douban.com. The group stated in its introduction that the main function of the group is to "share failure stories" for "failed students" in "985" and "211" universities. They are part of the same generation whose dissatisfaction with social competitiveness has led to the phenomenon of “lying low”.

[2] See Note 1, chapter 4.13

[3] Baijiu is a colourless spirit usually distilled from sorghum, but may have other grains as well. It can range from 35-60% alcohol by volume and is usually consumed in quite small glasses at banquets and meals. Probably the most famous baijiu by brand name is Maotai.

[4] Lines from Chairman Mao’s poem Farewell to the God of Plague written on July 1, 1958. Yao and Shun were legendary monarchs in ancient China, believed to be saints and wise leaders of the people.

Qian Changming: How to Achieve "Let the People Supervise the Government"? –On the question of proletarian democracy.

 

Qian Changming - 2022-01-06 - Source: Original

(Translator’s preface: Another careful piece by Qian Changming which avoids criticising the capitalist-roaders running China today, but which certainly damns them particularly through the quote from Mao: "We cannot understand the question of the rights of the people to mean that the state is run by only a section of the population, and that the people enjoy the rights to labour, education, social security, etc., under the administration of these people." The wording on the image above reads “Mao Zedong’s “big democracy” and “small democracy” and shows workers utilizing the big character poster format to speak out freely and supervise the Party and government.)

In July 1945, Chairman Mao said in his "Cave Conversation"[1] on "Breaking the Cycle of History": "We have found a new way, and we can jump out of this cyclical law. This new path is democracy. Only by letting the people supervise the government will the government dare not relax. Only when everyone stands up and is responsible will there be no 'death' of the new regime”.

By "democracy", Chairman Mao undoubtedly meant "us" - the proletarian democracy that was introduced under the conditions of the Communist Party taking power.

In October 1949, when New China was established, under the leadership of the Party, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which represented people from all walks of life, was set up; immediately afterwards, the National People's Congress (NPC) was elected by democratic universal suffrage, and the government was organised, establishing a people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. This is the political system of proletarian democracy.

In theory, the purpose of a proletarian democratic political system is to "serve the people", and as long as this system is perfected, proletarian democracy can be fully developed and the people can become the masters of their own house. However, as a matter of fact, proletarian democratic political institutions are also made up of human beings, and human beings can make mistakes; moreover, due to historical limitations, even in socialist countries, bourgeois right still existed for a long period of time, which inevitably led some cadres to become bureaucratic and even "alienated" into a bureaucratic class. This requires that "the people should supervise the government", that "everyone should be held accountable", that a certain balance be maintained in the relationship between "the government" and "the people, to ensure that the people's power will never be "alienated" or degenerated.

Chairman Mao was undoubtedly the first person to implement proletarian democracy.

As early as March 1949, in his report to the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Chairman Mao warned the Party to be on guard against the corruption of power. He stressed: "We have criticism and self-criticism, the weapons of Marxism-Leninism. We are able to remove the bad style and maintain the good style." In April 1950, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made another decision on the launching of criticism and self-criticism in newspapers and publications.

In order to "let the people monitor the government", the people must be allowed to speak. Only when the people are allowed to speak through various channels can there be "supervision" by the people.

To let the people speak, the bureaucracy cannot be allowed to suppress mass criticism.

In January 1953, Chairman Mao launched a struggle within the Party against "bureaucracy, commandism and lawlessness". He gave instructions on one of the materials that "suppressing criticism will lead to expulsion from the Party or a public trial by the people", which led to one case of retaliation against someone who suppressed mass criticism. Huang Yifeng, a veteran revolutionary who joined the Party in 1925, was severely punished with "expulsion from the Party and withdrawal of all administrative posts", which greatly educated all Party members.

"The handling of the Huang Yifeng case was a manifestation of Chairman Mao's idea that Party members must be openly supervised by the people, regardless of their position, in order to prevent them from being corrupted by power.

In order to "let the people supervise the government", Chairman Mao encouraged the people to write big-character posters to expose problems as early as 1958, realising the "Big Speaking Out, Big Airing of Views, Big Character Posters and Big Debates". Later on, these "four major" rights of the people were written into the 1975 Constitution.

Chairman Mao has repeatedly stressed: "In short, let other people speak out. The heavens will not fall and you will not be thrown out. If you do not let others speak, then the day will surely come when you are thrown out." (Speech at the Enlarged Central Working Conference, 30 January 1962)

To "open the door to the Party" and let the non-Party people judge Party members together is also a manifestation of "letting the people supervise the government". The proletarian democratic political system is led by the Communist Party, and supervision of the Communist Party is, in essence, supervision of the government.

Chairman Mao not only implemented proletarian democracy in practice, but also perfected it from a theoretical point of view. from December 1959 to February 1960, when he gathered several Party comrades in a collective study of the Soviet Textbook of Political Economy, he made a profound observation on the question of perfecting proletarian democracy.

"We cannot understand the question of the rights of the people to mean that the state is run by only a section of the population, and that the people enjoy the rights to labour, education, social security, etc., under the administration of these people." "The right of workers to manage the state, to manage the army, to manage all kinds of enterprises, to manage culture and education, is in fact the greatest right, the most fundamental right, of workers under the socialist system. Without this right, the workers' rights to work, to rest, to education, and so on, are not guaranteed."

This is the deepening of the idea that "only when everyone rises up and takes responsibility will the government not be destroyed". How can the people directly exercise their rights as "masters" and supervise the government by "everyone rising up and taking responsibility"? In the final analysis, it is the people themselves who must participate in the management, otherwise it will not be put into practice.

How can we achieve direct participation of the people in the management of state affairs, and how can we realise that "the people must manage the superstructure themselves"? Obviously, this is a brand new subject, which depends on the exploration and practice of proletarian democracy. In fact, this exploration and practice can begin with the implementation of the electoral system of the Paris Commune.

The comprehensive electoral system of the Paris Commune had several major features: firstly, all leaders were directly elected by the people; secondly, elected leaders had to be accountable to the people and subject to their supervision; thirdly, the electors could remove the elected at any time; fourthly, all elected public officials received only a salary equivalent to a worker's wage and all privileges enjoyed by bourgeois state officials were abolished.

On the basis of the introduction of the electoral system of the Paris Commune, the concrete practice of direct participation by the people in the management of state affairs and all areas of the superstructure should be further explored. This should be a long process of practice and only persistent exploration will bear fruit.

To perfect proletarian democracy, the central question has always been: how best to let the people speak and "let the people supervise the government"!

钱昌明：怎样实现“让人民来监督政府”? ——兼谈无产阶级民主问题 - 乌有之乡 (wyzxwk.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] The “cave conversation” refers to a conversation about democratic China between Mao Zedong and Huang Yanpei in the cave living room of Mao Zedong's residence in Yan'an in July 1945. Asked by Huang Yanpei how to change the law of the dynastic cycle, according to which a dynasty existed until it lost the mandate of Heaven and was replaced by a new dynasty, Mao Zedong said, "We have found a new way, and we can jump out of this cyclical law. This new path is democracy. Only by letting the people supervise the government will the government dare not relax. Only when everyone stands up and is responsible will there be no 'death' of the new regime”.

 

Day in the Life of a Chinese Telemarketing Company

 

(Translator's preface:  This is one section of a 170-page report prepared two years ago under the title "Chinese Society Survey Research" and looking at the conditions faced by different sections of workers in China. Its editors are quite clear that a restoration of capitalism has occurred in China and that workers are exploited and denied the rights due to them in a socialist society. I have added several footnotes to explain some of the words and phrases used by the worker who is relating this particular section. The graphic above is from the Chinese website 是小资，还是脑力劳动无产者 | 少年中国评论 (youngchina.review) and an article there titled "Is it the petty-bourgeoisie or the brain-power proletariat?")

Editor's note: This article gives a brief overview of the basics of a 50-person sized telemarketing company. Through this article, we can get a general idea of the problems of this type of small sales company that exists in large numbers: long working hours, severe oppression, widespread illegal matters, and a class consciousness that has not yet been awakened in most employees.

It is common for service workers, brainwashed by success stories, poisoned by chicken soup texts[1] and bound by consumerism, to be somewhat less aware and less organised than manufacturing workers, so the awakening of class consciousness among the employees of such companies tends to come later. However, it is clear that the author of this article possesses a clear class consciousness, which also suggests that even in such industries, advanced proletarians are beginning to emerge gradually.

I. Basic information

I am a native of Henan, living in the countryside since I was a child, an only child, and my parents are engaged in farming.

After I graduated from college in 2013, my first job was as a down-loader in a machinery factory in my hometown, mainly cutting, bending and punching steel plates. I was not satisfied with the 2,000 yuan salary in the machine shop and hoped to earn more money to change my family's plight. Soon after, I quit my job and moved to the big city to look for a way out. I joined a telemarketing company in Guangzhou because I had heard people say that sales could make a lot of money. It was a small company, and in this company, I felt the pressure of capital on us.

The size of the company was more than 40 people, including the boss, and there were four business groups, each with a team leader who was responsible for coordinating about ten people under him. The company's business was very simple. The boss distributes telephone resources to each group, and each group member gets a list of names and makes telephone calls to contact customers and sell products. The team leader assists the team members by teaching them sales techniques, helping them to upgrade and maintain their customers, enlivening the atmosphere, etc.

Initially there was some novelty when I started working at the company, but after a few days I fell into a boring repetition of work.

Every day the work is a repetition of a boring process.

I arrive at 8.30am for the morning meeting, where the leader rewards and punishes the work done yesterday. The rewards and punishments were simple and brutal: those who completed their tasks were given money directly, those who did not were criticised and hung, and there were even corporal punishments, such as push-ups for boys and squats for girls. The internet often reveals all kinds of strange corporal punishment, such as slapping each other and learning how to crawl, which are not uncommon in this industry.

After the corporal punishment, the team leader routinely gives everyone a chicken blood injection[2] and pours chicken soup texts. This kind of stuff was a little refreshing at first two times, but then there was nothing left but disgust.

The job started at 9 o'clock and consisted of making phone calls to customers to sell products. Out of a hundred calls, ninety or so are rudely disconnected, and the fragile mind is constantly broken. The whole morning was spent on the phone constantly. It was hard to get through to 12 o'clock, so we were happy to leave work for lunch, followed by a rare lunch break of one and a half hours.

The lunch break ends at 1.30 and the whole staff play games or do a group dance, which is done to wake us up so we don't slack off. At two o'clock the afternoon officially begins, still making phone calls to clients. Repetition after repetition, dull and boring. There was no skill involved and the whole thing became an appendage to the job.

In the afternoon, you have to keep calling from two o'clock to six o'clock. Imagine what kind of torture it is to be on the phone all day. Dinner was served at six, and after a short break, the party started at seven. At the party, the leaders take us through a summary of the day's takeaways, with those who have achieved sharing their success stories and learning to exchange sales techniques. At around 7.30pm, we start the evening work and continue to call and sweep customers. At 9:30 pm, those who have completed their tasks can leave work, and those who have not completed their sales tasks work overtime until 11:00 pm.

Such is the life of a day, from 8.30am to 9.30pm (or even 11pm), all the time on the phone, apart from meals, meetings and a few breaks. And all the calls, the vast majority of them, were hung up on. Boring, dull and torturous. It is rare to have a happy moment in a day, and perhaps the happiest time is when you go for a late dinner with your colleagues after work.

II. Pay situation

In such a boring life, our salary is also pitifully low. We are paid a base salary plus commission, with a base salary of 3,000 and a commission of ten points on sales performance. The company team leader is also paid a base salary plus commission, with a base salary of 5,000 and a commission of three points of the team's overall performance. If the team leader also does business himself, he also has 10 points of commission for his own business.

As for overtime pay, that is a matter of legend, in law but not in reality. Apart from overtime pay, there are many things that companies do that are illegal. In fact, this is often the case with such small companies, where violations are everywhere, and I will list them roughly as follows: (1) The source of telephone numbers is usually obtained illegally by the owner through certain channels. (2) No labour agreement is signed with the employee, and no social security is bought for the employee, and the employee is usually also made to sign a waiver of social security agreement. Based on an average salary of 4,000 yuan per month, the company can make an illegal profit of 800 yuan per person per month by paying less social security, which is 40,000 yuan for 50 people, or 480,000 yuan a year. (3) Cash wages are generally given to employees as a means of tax evasion. (4) Corporal punishment and even verbal abuse of employees is common. (5) All that is needed to dismiss an employee is a word from the boss or team leader, and there is no compensation for dismissing the employee, and the employee's performance commission or even normal salary is not paid after dismissal. In this way, the company deducts the hard-earned money of the employees every year.

However, although the law is serious, labour disputes are not much, because in the telemarketing industry, employees generally do not have a strong sense of rights, the general staff will not have any disputes with the company.

III. Preliminary analysis

Inside the company, the boss has absolute authority and is the ruling class (bourgeoisie) of our company. The team leader pleases the boss at the top and oppresses the staff at the bottom. His salary is a bit higher than the ordinary staff, but it is also difficult to buy a house and settle down, and he belongs to the middle class which is dependent on the bourgeoisie. I think they are actually the proletariat, but their consciousness is brainwashed by the boss. We, the employees, are at the bottom of the pile and tend to go against the grain. It doesn't matter if the staff are united or not, most of them still have a good relationship in private, but there is no sense of rebellion. One reason is the status quo of the industry, the default unspoken rules, and the second is that we have been brainwashed by the corporate culture of these companies, and our class consciousness has not awakened. They have never thought of using legal means to protect their rights, because the jobs they do are not particularly bright jobs, and they are harassed during the phone calls rather than directly at work. The employees themselves are actually disgusted with the work they do, but in order to make quick money, they are greedy for comfort, and they are not willing to get steady and reliable jobs to make real money.

Employees like us, who save money every month, can only live at the bottom of the ladder.

I was doing very well because I was doing well personally and I got over 7,000 a month. Every month after I got paid, I would send home 2000 to my parents. The rest of the money, rent 700, daily meals 900 (30 per day), smoking 300 per month (10 yuan a box per day), other expenses almost nothing. Because I'm frugal and want to save up for the future. I spend very little on socialising and only go out for a meal with friends once a month, spending a few hundred dollars at most. I don't buy a lot of household items, and when I do, I try to buy cheap ones, a few dozen a month. Basically, the monthly fixed expenditure is more than 4,000 yuan (including 2,000 yuan for my parents). In a year, I can save about 40,000 yuan (not including the amount given to my parents).

There are actually not many employees like me. Firstly, many colleagues do not earn a high income, basically a base salary; this part of the people resigned or don’t dare hand in their own resignation. Staff mobility is particularly large, in a few months they will be replaced by a group of fresh blood. In addition, many colleagues will go to KTV, bars and bathing centres to spend money after they are paid, especially those with good performance in that month. Some of them will also buy things they like, such as designer clothes, etc. In this way, many colleagues cannot save much money in a year, and some even have to borrow money for the New Year.

Such small companies exist in large numbers in China, and many of them are in the grey areas and on the edge of the law, not only exploiting the rights of their employees, but also defrauding their clients. The company instils in us a wolfish culture, consumerism and hedonism, which leads to employees losing their sense of morality by any means in order to perform, losing their sense of rights in the general competition, becoming numb in the illusion of getting rich, and becoming penniless in the atmosphere of hedonism, with the end result that employees become more dependent on the company.

 

 

 

 

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[1] “Chicken soup text” is an internet buzz word for articles designed to inspire people, but which often leads to a mind-numbing outcome.  They are often seen on popular platforms like QQ. Many of those who do pyramid schemes or disguised pyramid schemes also give very positive speeches, but their content is false and misleading.

[2] Chicken blood is an expression of behaviour that is used to satirise the person's sudden emotional exuberance towards a particular person or thing. It originated in the 1980s from a health care method called "chicken blood therapy", in which the blood of a year-old rooster was drawn out and injected into a person. It was popular among the old cadres. People who had chicken blood injected into them had a red face and were said to be mentally and physically stimulated.