A Window into Modern Chinese Ideology

Through my subscription to www.geostrategy-direct.com I have learned that there is now an english language version of the Chinese "PLA Daily" newspaper online. The website claims to have been founded, in the english version, on March 5, 2003 "under the leadership of the General Political Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army." (I guess this isn't much different than the NY Times.)

This appears to be a gold mine of blogger material, and I intend to exploit it for all it's worth. I'll start by examining one of the speeches of Chairman Jiang Zemin published in 2002 by the Chinese "Foreign Language Press" entitled, 'Jiang Zemin on the "Three Represents."

I don't have a copy of the book, but it appears to be posted online in it's entirety. The first installment is dated February 25, 2000 and entitled, 'How Our Party is to Attain the "Three Represents" Under the New Historical Conditions.' It is interesting reading, but presents some challenges to interpret its meaning due the imprecision of translating Chinese into English.

It begins, "To run China well, the key lies with our Party, that is, the soundness of the Party's ideology, its style of work, its organization and discipline, its fighting capability, and its leadership level. This was what Chairman Mao and Comrade Deng Xiaoping always emphasized during their lifetime; this is also a basic experience our Party has gained from long years of practice in leading the people in revolution, construction and reform. Whether or not we can meet the requirements of the new situation and new tasks and build our Party into one that is more compact in organization, more uniform in action, more solid in unity and more vigorous in vitality, has an important bearing on the prosperity of the cause of the Party and the people and the long-term stability and peace of the state."

So the Chairman of the Chinese communist party is lecturing that the key to "run[ning] China well" includes "the soundness of the Party's ideology" and "its fighting capability." These factors have an "important bearing" on the "stability and peace of the state." Not surprising, really, but let's look further.

By referencing another speech from the book, on June 28, 2000 entitled, 'The New Situation and New Circumstances Facing Ideological and Political Work,' we can see what this soundness of ideology and fighting capability are required to counteract. "It is worth noting that since the October Revolution the capitalist countries have spared no pains to launch attacks of all kinds against the socialist countries, including ideological infiltration as the major form of offensive. The drastic changes in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union were closely related to the long-term ideological infiltration from advanced capitalist countries. At present, China is the largest socialist country in the world. It is developing continuously, and becoming more powerful and prosperous all the time. Hostile capitalist forces are intensifying the implementation of the "Westernization'' and "disintegration'' political strategies through various ways and means, in an attempt to subvert the leadership of the CPC and China's socialist system. They will never change this political scheme of theirs. Over the past few years, they have ceaselessly used human rights, democracy, freedom, ethnicity, religion, the Dalai Lama and Taiwan issues to attack us. They have colluded with the so-called "democratic movement elements'' who exile themselves abroad and antagonistic elements in China, in an attempt to take colluded action. The struggle between us and domestic and overseas hostile forces in the field of infiltration and anti-infiltration and subversion and anti-subversion will be protracted and complicated. This is a main manifestation of class struggle that still exists and will continue to exist for a long time to a certain extent in China."

So to oppose the ideas of "human rights, democracy, freedom" and other "hostile forces" the Party must nurture "the soundness of its ideology" [ok, no problem there] and its "fighting capability" [in case the ideology is not sound, they can defend their incorrect system, beliefs and ideas by the power of force]. Those of us who understand that a system ensuring individual human liberty is the only moral system know that the Party's plan is destined to rely on force since their ideology can never be sound.

And Jemin alludes to this as well. "But if ideological and political work remains weak or is neglected, erroneous ideological trends will spread, which will confuse people's thinking, lead to disunity and create serious consequences. The political turbulence in 1989 was a grave lesson. We must have a sober understanding that owing to complicated international and domestic factors, we have a great deal of work to do in the ideological and political field, and the contradictions and struggles in our country's ideological and political field are protracted and complicated, and will become extremely acute under certain conditions."

A "grave lesson" indeed.

More to come on this mother lode of collectivist thought in future weeks.

Posted by JohnGalt at July 19, 2003 08:56 AM